The War Of Anti-Christ With The Church 1884 - Dillon

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LECTURES

DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH IN OCTOBER, 1884,

M0KS1GN0B GEORGE F. DILLON, D.D.,

IRtMimurr »j<mttlu\ iinnrj.

"Jnetruet the people ejite'he artifice* used by eeeietiee of rftw kind in 4*dneinv men and eniidn;
them into 'heir mnttt, find at to the dtprmnttj of (J«tir opinions tend the itncledneu of their ucfj."-
Excyclu-a:. HraAXC* ISenca df Lbo XIII.

DUBLIN :

M. H. GH,L & SON, PKPTCB SACKVILU3.STREET.
tOSDON AND NEW v U RK: B1JHN9 AND OAXJiS.

PHOTOGRAPH OF ORIGINAL EDITION

PUBLISHED BY
MESSRS. M. H. GILL & SON, DUBLIN,
IN 1885

GRAND ORIENT
FREEMASONRY
UNMASKED

As the Secret Power
Behind Communism

by

MONSIGNOR GEORGE F. DILLON DD.

with Preface

by

The Rev. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., B.A., D.Ph., D.D.

BRITONS

LONDON

BRITONS PUBLISHING COMPANY

MCMLXV

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the memory of His Holiness
Pope Leo XIII whose command to the faithful to "tear away
the mask from Freemasonry" inspired the title of the new
edition in 1950.

CONTENTS

page

PUBLISHERS FOREWORD 7
FOREWORD

I. GOOD VERSUS EVIL 27

n. THE RISE OF ATHEISM IN EUROPE 3

in. VOLTAIRE 32

IV. FREEMASONRY 40

V. THE UNION AND "ILLUMINISM" OF FREEMASONRY 49
VI. THE ILLUMINISM OF ADAM WEISHAUPT 53

VII. THE CONVENT OF WILHELMSBAD 5 9

VU1. CABALISTIC MASONRY OR MASON1G SPIRITISM 61

IX. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 64

X. NAPOLEON AND FREEMASONRY 69

XI. FREEMASONRY AFTER THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 77

XII. KINDRED SECRET SOCIETIES IN EUROPE 81

XIII. THE CARBONARI 87

XIV. PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA 8 9

XV. LETTER OF PICCOLO TIGRE 97
XVI. THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE WAR PARTY IN

MASONRY 1 1

XVU. LORD PALMERSTON 113

XVIII. WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PARTY 120

XIX. A WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON 127
XX. THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, THE BLACK

HAND, ETC. 133

XXI. FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES 142

XXn. FENIAN1SM 155

XX111. CONCLUSION 163

INDEX 165

"Lying is their rale, Satan is their God, and shameful deeds
their sacrifice." Pius VIII, Traditae Humilitati Nostrae, 1829.

Gregory XVI compares the secret societies to a sink in
which "are congregated and intermingled all the sacrileges,
infamy and blasphemy which are contained in the most
abominable heresies." Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832.

"Those baneful secret sects which have come forth from the
darkness for the ruin and devastation of Church and State,"
Pius IX, Quo Pluribus, 1846, to whom he later applied the
words of Our Lord: "You are from your father the devil, and
it is the works of your father that you wish to do." Pius IX,
Singulari Quadam, 1864.

"You see then before you the two systems .... On the
one side is the Church of 'men of goodwill', one, holy, visible
and universal; on the other, the ecclesia malignantium, as the
Scriptures call it, the Church of men of evil will; one in
enmity against the Church of God, though manifold as the
multiplicity of evil; unholy in thought, word, deed, intention
and will; invisible because secret, stealthy, subterraneous,
working out of sight, and in darkness undermining the private
purities of homes, the public order of States, the thrones of
princes." Cardinal Manning: Rome and the Revolution, 1867.

"Filled with the spirit of Satan, who knows how to trans-
form himself into an angel of light, Freemasonry puts forward
as its pretended aim the good of humanity. Paying a lip
service to the authority of law, and even to the obligations of
religion, it aims (as its own statutes declare), at the destruction
of civil authority and of the Christian priesthood, both of
which it regards as the foes of human liberty." Leo XIII:
Parvenu a la Vingtcinquieme annee, 1902.

PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

The original title of this book, which was compiled from
a series of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in October, 1884
by Mgr. Dillon, was The War of Antichrist with the Church
and Christian Civilization.

The author wrote it "in order to do his part in carrying
out the instruction given by the Sovereign Pontiff in the
Encyclical Humanum Genus when he called upon the pastors
of souls, to whom it was addressed, to 'instruct the people
as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing
men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity
of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts'. Mgr.
Dillon's work has already been honoured by the Holy Father
himself with so marked and so unusual an approbation that
there is no need for us to accord it any further praise than
merely to take note of the fact. The book was presented to His
Holiness, accompanied by an Italian version of its table of
contents, and of long extracts from its principal sections,
and Leo XIII was pleased to order that the Italian version
should be completed, and the book printed and published
at Rome at his own expense." (The Month, Sept. 1885).

Despite the fact that the lectures were delivered by a
Catholic prelate to an audience composed mainly of members
of his own faith, we feel that the subject of international
political skullduggery is one which cannot fail to interest
Catholic and non-Catholic alike, the more so indeed since
events in the course of the decades following the original
publication of this book have confirmed the lecturer's thesis.

The last four editions have appeared under the title of
Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked.

7

FOREWORD

The Britons Publishing Company is to be congratulated
on reprinting this lecture on Freemasonry by Right Rev. Mgr.
George Dillon, D.D. The lecture was delivered at Edinburgh
in October, 1884, that is, about six months after the appear-
ance of Pope Leo XIII's famous Encyclical Letter, Humanum
Genus, on Freemasonry. At the request of many who had
heard the lecture and of others who had read the reports that
appeared in the papers, Mgr. Dillon decided to publish it,
along with another lecture delivered to the same audience on
the Spoliation of the Congregation of Propaganda. The book
was brought out by the excellent firm of M. H. Gill and Son,
Ltd., O'Connell Street, Dublin, in 1885, but it has been long
out of print.

In the original preface, the author pointed out that the
lecture had not been intended to be a formal and exhaustive
treatment of the subject, and that he had embodied in the
book several documents which were only briefly referred to or
partially quoted in the lecture. 1 His object was to give a clear
outline of the "whole question of secret, atheistic organisation,
its origin, its nature, its history in the last century and in this,
and its unity of Satanic purpose in a wonderful diversity of
forms." He found that it was necessary to do this because
"very few, if any, attempts have been made in our language
to treat the subject as a whole. Several writers appear to
assume as known that which was really unknown to very
many: and few touched at all upon the fact of the supreme
direction given to the universality of secret societies from a
guiding, governing and — even to the rank and file of the
members of the secret societies themselves — unknown and
invisible junta."

Mgr. Dillon does not speak explicitly of the two currents
of thought and action proceeding from the Masonic French
Revolution, namely, the current of Rousseauist-Lockian-
Masonic Liberalism and the current of Socialism and Com-
munism. 1 Implicitly, however, he does so when, on the one

1 cf. My book, The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society.

9

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

hand, he foreshadows the United States of Europe and World
Federalism and, on the other, quotes the infamous Declaration
of the International in 1868. This Declaration, formulated at
the International Congress held at Geneva in 1868 and quoted
by Mgr. Dillon in his preface, is well worth reproducing, at
least in part.

It runs as follows: "The object of the International Asso-
ciation of Workmen, as of every other Socialist Association, is
to do away with the parasite and the pariah. Now what
parasite can be compared to the priest . . . ?

"God and Christ, these citizen-Providences, have been at
all times the armour of Capital and the most sanguinary
enemies of the working classes. It is owing to God and to
Christ that we remain to this day in slavery. It is by deluding
us with lying hopes that the priests have caused us to accept
all the sufferings of this earth. It is only after sweeping away
all religion, and after tearing up even to the last roots every
religious idea that we can arrive at our political and social
ideal ....

"Down, then, with God and with Christ! Down with the
despots of heaven and earth! Death to the priests! Such is
the motto of our grand crusade."

In a note on page 20 of the original edition 1 , Mgr. Dillon
returned to the question of the direction of Freemasonry,
which he had mentioned in his preface. He there says: "The
Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established
fact everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish
formulas employed by Freemasonry, the Jewish traditions
which run through its ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or
to the work of Jewish contrivers .... Who knows but behind
the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on
Christians to persecute the Church and destroy it, there lies a
hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and in the darkest
depths of secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still
which looks to a return to the land of Judah and to the re-
building of the Temple of Jerusalem?"

These remarks can furnish the starting point for a deeper
examination of the whole question of secret societies and their
action, studied in the light of the Encyclicals of the Sovereign
Pontiffs, and of history.
1 This note will be found on page 43 of the present edition

10

Foreword

The rejection of order by Satan and the other fallen angels
was irrevocable. It was a declaration, by the whole body of
them together, of perpetual war on and implacable hatred
towards the Blessed Trinity and the Supernatural Life of
Grace. The fall of the human race could be undone, because
human beings can change their minds and the human race
comes into existence successively by propagation from the
first Adam. In the undoing of the Fall, however, God per-
mitted a second rejection of order.

In spite of the fact that they had been repeatedly warned,
in types and figures, and orally by the prophets, about the way
they would treat the true Messiah when He came, the Jews
turned against Him and the whole Divine Plan He proposed.
When they refused to enter into His designs, God permitted
the crime of Deicide, and by the supreme act of humble sub-
mission on Calvary, the Supernatural Life of Grace was
restored to the world. Fulfilling the prophecies to the letter,
Our Lord allowed Himself to be put to death, but He died
proclaiming the Divine Plan for order.

God wished the Jews as a people to accept His Only-
Begotten Son and to be the Heralds of the Supernatural, super-
national Life of His Mystical Body. They were thus offered
the glorious privilege of proclaiming and working for the only
mode of realising the union and brotherhood of nations which
is possible since the Fall. On account of their racial pride
they refused to accept that there could be any higher life than
their national life and they would not hear of the non- Jewish
nations entering into the Kingdom of the Mystical Body on
the same level as themselves. The Crucifixion of Our Lord
on Calvary was, however, not only the public rejection by the
Jewish nation of the Divine Programme for order in the world,
but was at the same time the proclamation by that nation of
its determination to work against God for the triumph of an-
other Messias. Since Our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Messias,
is the Source of the Supernatural Life through membership of
His Mystical Body, the future Messias must be anti-super-
natural or naturalistic, and membership of Christ will have
to be eliminated in preparation for him. Since the True
Supernatural Messias came to found the supranational king-
dom of His Mystical Body into which he asked the Jewish
nation to lead all nations the future Messias must be a purely

11

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

Jewish National Messias and his mission can have no other
object than to impose the rule of the Jewish nation on the
other nations.

The choice presented to the Jewish nation by the coming
of Our Lord Jesus Christ may be represented diagramatically
as follows: —

Supernatural and supranational
Kingdom of the Mystical Body of Christ.
The Jewish nation instructed
by the prophets.

Naturalistic ambition to impose Rule
of their nation.

The Jewish nation instructed by the Prophets and Figures
of the Old Testament, and, lastly, by St. John the Baptist, was
meant to turn upwards, at the bidding of God become Man,
and to put all its splendid natural qualities at the service of
the True Supernatural order of the world. Instead of doing so,
it turned downwards to the slavery of a self-centred ambition
dictated by national pride. The attitude of Saul prior to his
conversion on the road to Damascus is typical of the corrupt
ideas concerning the mission of the Messias which had taken
hold of Jewish minds and had led them to reject Our Lord
Jesus Christ. St. Paul saw the truth about the Mystical Body
of Christ after his conversion and tried to get his fellow-
countrymen to recognise their error, but the nation as such
refused to listen. In his Christmas Allocution, 1948, Pope
Pius XII brought out the contrast between the alternatives
that faced the Jewish nation at the coming of Our Lord as
follows: "Hear, resounding in the night like the bells of
Christmas, the admirable words of the Apostle to the Gentiles,
who had been himself a slave to the mean, narrow prejudices
of nationalist and racial pride, stricken down along with him
on the road to Damascus: 'He (Christ Jesus) is our peace who
hath made both (peoples) one . . . killing the enmities in
Himself. And coming He preached peace to you that were
afar off, and peace to them that were nigh.' (Ephesians II,
14, 15, 16, 17.)" 1

With that narrow, national outlook dictated by racial

1 Translated from the original Italian as it appeared in Ada Apostolicae
Sedis, Jan, 31, 1949.

12

Foreword

pride, which Pope Pius XII said was stricken down with St.
Paul on the road to Damascus, the Jewish nation has continued
on down the centuries. That outlook has, in fact, become
more accentuated with time. Accordingly, over and above
the fundamental disorder of original sin, there is in our fallen
and redeemed world an additional source of disorder in the
determined opposition of His own nation according to the
flesh of the Redeemer and source of order.

Over and above the struggle against the self-centred tend-
encies of individual souls, the Catholic Church, the Mystical
Body of Christ, has to face the persistent opposition of the
Jewish nation. According to the leaders of the Jewish nation,
now as 1,900 years ago, the union of the nations is not meant
by God to take place through entrance into and acceptance of
the supranational Kingdom of Our Lord's Mystical Body but
through acceptance of and submission to the Naturalistic
Messianism of the Jewish nation. This is made very clear in
the letter from the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, which appeared in
The Irish Independent (Dublin) of January 6, 1948. Referring
to the establishment of the new State of Israel, Rabbi Hertzog
said: "Eventually it will lead to the inauguration of the true
union of the nations through which will be fulfilled the eternal
message to mankind of our immortal prophets." 1

Jewish Naturalism or Anti-Supernaturalism, by its striving
for a new Messianic age, contains a two-fold source of corrup-
tion and decay for other nations. On the one hand, by its
opposition to the Supernatural Life coming from Our Lord, it
strives directly against the Light and Strength by which alone
human life, individual and national, can be lived in order. On
the other hand, whether the naturalistic Messias to come be an
individual Jew or the Jewish Race, it means that the Jews, as
a nation, are seeking to impose their particular national form
on other nations. The imposition by any nation of its national
form on another nation attacks directly the natural or normal
line of development of that nation and undermines its natural
virtues, which are the foundation and the bulwark of the
Supernatural virtues. Thus in two ways the Jews, as a nation,

1 The contrast between the Programme of Christ, the King through His
Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, and the Programme of the Jewish
nation since the rejection of Our Lord Jesus Christ before Pilate and on
Calvary is set out in parallel columns in my book, The Kingship of Christ
and Organised Naturalism, pp. 52, 53.

13

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

are objectively aiming at giving society a direction which is in
complete opposition to the order proclaimed by God become
Man.

In spite of the unwavering naturalistic opposition of the
Jewish nation and notwithstanding the weakness of fallen
human nature. Western Europe in the 13th century, had ac-
cepted the Programme of Christ the King and had organised
society on that foundation. The organisation was imperfect
as all the social structures of fallen and redeemed humanity
will inevitably be, but it was some response to God's loving
condescension. Since then, there has been steady decay.

The uprise of Protestantism in the 16th century rent the
unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. Chapter XVI of William
Thomas Walsh's splendid work, Philip II, is entitled Free-
masonry in the 16th Century and shows that there was already
at that time some sort of secret organisation engaged in
working for naturalism against ordered submission to Christ
the King. He adds that "it is no longer debatable that, if the
false leaders of the Jews did not originate the secret societies
to cover their own anti-Christian activities and to influence
credulous members of the Christian communities, they had a
great deal to do with the business. The degrees and ritual of
Freemasonry are shot through with Jewish symbolism: the
candidate is going to the East, towards Jerusalem, he is going
to rebuild the Temple (destroyed in fulfilment of the prophecy
of Christ), . . . The Grand Orient and Scottish Rite lodges,
sources of so many modern revolutions, are more militant,
more open and apparently more virulent than some of the
others whom they are leading into a single world-organisation
by gradual steps." 1

1 Philip II, pp. 308, 309. The Jewish writer, Bernard Lazare, so remarkable
for his hatred of Our Divine Lord and the Catholic Church, is in full
agreement with William Thomas Walsh, who was a splendid Catholic.
"It is certain," writes Lazare, "that there were Jews at the cradle of
Freemasonry — Kabbalistic Jews, as is proved by some of the rites that
have been preserved. During the years that preceded the French
Revolution, they very probably entered in greater numbers still into the
councils of the society and founded secret societies themselves. There
were Jews around Weishaupt, and Martinez de Pasqualis, a Jew of
Portuguese origin, organised numerous groups of Illuminati in France,
recruiting many adepts to whom he taught the doctrine of reintegration.
The lodges founded by Martinez were mystical, whilst the other orders
of Freemasonry were rather rationalist. This permits one to say that the
secret societies represented the two sides of the Jewish mind: practical

14

Foreword

From what we know to-day we can conclude that "some-
thing very much like modern Freemasonry, surely in spirit and
probably to a great extent in form . . . existed in the lifetime
of Philip II (1527-1598)." 1 What we see, then, in the years
following 1717 is rather the emergence into fuller light of a
secret organised Force aiming at enrolling and forming groups
of adepts to work for Naturalism, that is, for the denial of the
Supernatural Life and the elimination of membership of Christ
from society. The Jewish nation is a non-secret organised
naturalistic Force, that is to say its naturalistic opposition to
the Mystical Body of Christ is openly proclaimed. Free-
masonry, the organised naturalistic Force acting in subordina-
tion to and in conjunction with the Jewish nation is a secret
society or group of societies, for its naturalism or anti-Super-
naturalism is secret or camouflaged. 2 Relatively few of its
members are fully aware of the naturalism of its end, its ritual
and its symbolism. According to Anderson's Constitution of
the Freemasons;, the masonic society obliges its members to be
good men and true, but insists that in. order to be morally
good men, it is a matter of indifference whether God's Plan
for the restoration of our Supernatural Life through Our Lord
Jesus Christ is accepted or not. Now, by original sin, we lost
the Supernatural Life of Grace, and we need that Life of
Grace that we may live an ordered life. Yet this society pro-
claims that a man can be good and true, that is, morally in
order, while remaining utterly indifferent to the unique Source
of Grace, Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Divinity. That is
equivalent to a denial of the Fall and is pure Naturalism.

In his great Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, on Free-
masonry, issued in 1884, Pope Leo XIII insists that "the

rationalisation and pantheism." (L'Antisemitisme, p. 339). Both sides
of the Jewish mind mentioned by B. Lazare are opposed to ordered
submission to God through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Philip II, by W. T. Walsh, p. 315. All those who have been brought
up on "official history" would do well to examine what took place in the
16th century in the light of what William T. Walsh reveals in his books,
Philip II, Isabella of Spain and Characters of the Inquisition.

2 For the manner in which the Jewish nation exercises control over Free-
masonry, see The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society,
pp. 234-236. "The Jews have swarmed into it (Freemasonry) from the
earliest times and controlled the higher grades and councils of the
ancient and accepted Scottish rite since the beginning of the nineteenth
century." (The X-Rays in Freemasonry, by A. Cowan, p. 61.)

15

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

naturalist and the Masons, not accepting by faith those truths
that have been made known to us by God's revelation, deny
that the first Adam fell." Thus we see the fundamental error
of Masonry, namely, its Naturalism. Again the great Pontiff
points out that "the ultimate aim of Freemasonry is to uproot
completely the whole religious and political order of the world
which has been brought into existence by Christianity and to
replace it by another in harmony with their way of thinking.
This will mean that the foundation and laws of the new struc-
ture of society will be drawn from pure Naturalism." 1 That
involves the elimination from society of every acknowledg-
ment of the Supernatural Life of members of Christ. In the
Encyclical Letter, moreover, Pope Leo XIII shows the
opposition of Freemasonry to five out of the six principal
points of the Programme for Society of Christ the King. In
regard to the fifth point, namely, the diffusion of ownership,
the Pope insists upon the fact that "Freemasonry is not only
not opposed to the plans of Socialists and Communists, but
looks upon them with the greatest favour, as its leading
principles are identical with theirs."

That the preparation and the triumph of the French
Revolution were the work of Freemasonry does not need
proof, since the Masons themselves boast of it. 3 Accordingly,
the Declaration of the Rights of Man is a Masonic production.
"When the Bastille fell," said Bonnet, the orator at the Grand
Orient Assembly in 1904, "Freemasonry had the supreme
honour of giving to humanity the chart which it had lovingly
elaborated. It was our Brother, de la Fayette, who first pre-
sented the 'project of a declaration of the natural rights of the
man and the citizen living in society,' to be the first chapter
of the Constitution. On August 25, 1789, the Constituent
Assembly, of which more than 300 members were Masons,
definitely adopted, almost word for word, in the form deter-

1 A full translation of the Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, will be found
in my book, The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism, pp. 55-80.

2 Readers will find the six points outlined in the opening chapter of The
Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism, and on pp. 96-97, the opposing
programmes of Christ the King and of Freemasonry are given in parallel
columns.

3 La Franc-Maconnerie Francaise el la Preparation de la Revolution, by Brother
Gaston Martin. Cf. La Dictature des Puissances Occultes, by Leon de
Poncins, pp. 80-95.

16

Foreword

mined upon in the Lodges, the text of the immortal Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man." Given the naturalism of Free-
masonry, the Declaration, then, is simply a formal renuncia-
tion of allegiance to Christ the King, of Supernatural Life,
and of membership of His Mystical Body. The French State
thereby officially declared that it no longer acknowledged any
duty to God through Our Lord Jesus Christ and no longer
recognised the dignity of membership of Christ in its citizens.
It thus inaugurated the attack on the organisation of society
under Christ the King which has continued down to the
present day.

That was only the first step. "The subservience of Free-
masonry with regard to the Jews," writes l'abbe Joseph
Lemann, "soon showed itself. How? . . . When the question
of Jewish emancipation came to be examined by the Con-
stituent Assembly (1789-1791) the deputies who took upon
themselves the task of getting it voted were all Freemasons.
Mirabeau gave it the persevering help of his eloquence, and
Mirabeau was a Freemason of the higher degrees, intimate
with Weishaupt and his associates, and closely linked up with
the Jews of Berlin. When, after having hesitated for two
years, the Constituent Assembly in its second-last meeting,
was still hesitating, it was a Freemason and Jacobin, A.
Duport, who demanded the vote with threats . . . Such was
the first secret service rendered to Judaism by Freemasonry.
After that one others will follow." 1

By the Revolution of 1789 then, the French State not only
decreed the ostracism of the True Supernatural Messias and
His Programme but admitted to full citizenship the members
of the Jewish nation, thus allowing them to work freely for the

1 L'Entree des Israelites dans la Societe Francaise, p. 356. The significance of
the Declaration of 1789 and the import of the French Revolution are
admirably set forth by this distinguished Jewish convert, in the work
just quoted and in La Preponderance juive, Part I. Father Lemann shows
that in promulgating the Rights of Man, the Revolution knowingly and
deliberately eliminated the Rights of the God-Man, Our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amongst the prominent Freemasons who worked for the emanci-
pation of the Jews, Father Lemann also mentions l'abbe Gregoire and
Talleyrand, Bishop of Auten.

In his able work, Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale (Vol. Ill, p. 304),
Mgr. H. Delassus says: "The servants of the Jews, the Freemasons, got
this decree voted, but only in the fourteenth session, after thirteen
fruitless attempts .... Thus was this foreign nation introduced into
the bosom of the French nation."

17

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

anti-Supernatural domination of their nation. Modern history
since 1789 is, to a large extent, the account of the domination
of State after State by the anti-Supernatural supranationalism
of Freemasonry, behind which has been steadily emerging the
still more strongly organised anti-Supernatural supranation-
alism of the Jewish nation. That is why the post-Revolution-
ary epoch has witnessed, in country after country, persistent
attacks upon the Programme of Christ the King.

After every successful Masonic Revolution, since the first
in 1789, down to and including the Spanish Revolution in
1931, the world soon began to hear of the country's entering
upon the path of "progress" by the introduction of "en-
lightened" reforms, such as the separation of Church and
State (or the putting of all religions on the same level), the
legalisation of divorce, the secularisation of the schools, the
suppression and banishment of religious orders and congrega-
tions, the glorification of Freemasonry, the nationalisation of
property and the unrestrained licence of the Press.

The process of elimination of the union of nations through
the Mystical Body of Christ, and the substitution therefore of
the naturalistic domination of the Jewish nation seems to be
now on the verge of triumph.

Back in 1922, the Assembly of the Grand Lodge of France
insisted that amongst the tasks lying ahead was "the creation
of a European spirit ... the formation of the United States of
Europe, or rather the Federation of the World." On this side
of the Iron Curtain and in the U.S.A. nations are being invited
to give up their national sovereignty to enter a Federation in
which those who control World-Masonry would certainly yield
enormous power and in which the Authentic Teacher of the
Moral Law would not be listened to. 1 On the far side of the
Iron Curtain, we see the continuation of what was stated by
Mr. Oudendyke, the Dutch Minister at St. Petersburg, and
published in the British White Paper of April, 1919. "Unless
Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately it is bound to
spread in one form or another all over Europe and the whole
world, as it is organised and worked by Jews who have no

1 For an outline of the antecedents and preparations for the United States
of Europe, see: The United States of Europe Conspirators, by B. Jensen
(published by W. L. Richardson, Lawers, by Aberfeldy, Scotland.
Price is.) See also Hollywood Reds are on "the Run" by Myron C. Fagan.

18

Foreword

nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own
ends the existing order of things." 1

In G. K.'s Weekly, February 4, 1937, Mr. Hilaire Belloc
wrote: "As for anyone who does not know that the present
revolutionary Bolshevist movement in Russia is Jewish, I can
only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppres-
sions of our deplorable Press." Anyone who carefully studies
the rulers of Russia and of the satellite States Poland and
Hungary for example, at the present day, will have the same
conclusion forced upon him.

The opposition of all the branches of Freemasonry,
French, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, etc., to the Catholic Church is
essential and ineradicable, for it is the opposition of naturalism
to the Supernatural Life of the Mystical Body of Christ and
to the organisation of society based on the infinite dignity of
that Life. In other words, it is the opposition of Anti-Christ to
Christ, It will be well to stress this great truth, because of the
statements one sometimes hears that English and American
Freemasonry is quite different from Continental Freemasonry.

In the Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, Pope Leo
XIII condemns the Naturalism of Freemasonry and not only
makes no distinction between the different branches of Free-
masonry, but teaches that no such distinction is to be made.
He alludes to the controversy about God, or rather about the
ancient landmark of the Great Architect of the Universe, be-
tween Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry and the French Grand
Orient, but says that the fact that there has recently been a
controversy about such a fundamental truth of the natural
order as the existence of God is clear proof of the inevitably
corrupting influence of Masonic Naturalism or Anti-Super-
naturalism. The Pope does not exempt from condemnation
the sections of Freemasonry that retain the ancient landmark.

1 The foreword of the While Paper stated that it was issued in accordance
with a decision of the English War Cabinet in January, 1919. The
White Paper speedily became unobtainable. Later, an abridged edition
was issued, from which the passage quoted had been eliminated, without
any indication of the omission. No reason was ever given for the sup-
pression of the original While Paper.

2 The Jewish writer, Louis Levine, in Soviet Russia To-day (Nov. 1946),
wrote: "Stalin and the father of his prospective Jewish son-in-law drank
Lachaim' together in the Kremlin." Again, David Weissman, in an
article in The B'nai B'rith Messenger (March 3, 1950), says that Stalin
is a Jew. Cf. Also Judaism and Bolshevism (The Britons Publishing Society).

19

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

No, the condemnation of Freemasonry in the Encyclical is
universal, without any attenuation in favour of what is called
Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. The text of Pope Leo XIII
with regard to God runs as follows:

"Although as a rule they (the Freemasons) admit the
existence of God, they themselves openly confess that they do
not all firmly assent to this truth and hold it with unwavering
conviction. For they do not attempt to hide the fact that this
question of God is the chief source and cause of discord
amongst them: nay, it is well known that recently it has been
the subject of a serious disagreement in their ranks. As a
matter of fact, however, they allow their members the greatest
licence on the point, so that they are at liberty to hold that
God exists or that God does not exist, and those who obstin-
ately affirm that there is no God are admitted just as readily
as those who, while asserting that there is a God, nevertheless
have wrong ideas about Him, like the pantheists. This is
purely and simply the suppression of the truth about God
while holding on to an absurd caricature of the Divine
Nature." 3

It is regrettable that the Encyclical on Freemasonry is
omitted from the collection of the Letters of Pope Leo XIII,
published by the Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, and
that the Rev. Editor seems to write, in the note on p. 272, as
if there were an essential difference between Freemasonry in
English-speaking countries and elsewhere. At least, his words
may leave some readers under that impression. Naturalism is
the fundamental error of Masonry and is common to all sec-
tion of the Craft. Corruption of the idea of God has inevitably
followed on the rejection of the one way instituted for return to
God, namely, membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. The
French Grand Orient has betrayed the presence of this corrup-
tion and degradation with regard to God more openly than
Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. That is the whole significance of
the controversy about the deletion by the French Grand Orient
of the expression, The Great Architect of the Universe.

1 The universality of Papal condemnations of Freemasonry is treated by
Fr. Cahill, SJ. in Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement, pp. 131, 132,
254. See also The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society,
pp. 204-223.

2 Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.
20

Foreword

The retention by the Grand Lodge of England, then, of
the article relating to the Great Architect of the Universe does
not signify that English Masonry is Christian, for English
Masonry does not accept the supremacy of the Mystical Body
of Christ. On the contrary, English Masonry is anti-super-
natural and anti-Christian like the other sections of the
Masonic Brotherhood, for it puts Mahomet and Buddha on the
same level as Christ, thus denying Christ's role as the one
Mediator. 1 Neither does this article mean that English
Masonry professes belief in a transcendant God as we know
Him, for it is compatible with acceptence of pantheism, that
is, with the identification of God with man. The retention
of the vague term, "Great Architect of the Universe," enables
English Freemasonry to pose as religious, while continuing
its work of sapping the belief of Englishmen in the Divinity of
Our Lord Jesus Christ and in the reality of that Supernatural
Life of Grace coming to us from Him, by which we are true
men as we ought to be.

Ample proofs of the relations between Anglo-Saxon Free-
masonry and Latin (Grand Orient) Freemasonry are to be
found in La Dictature des Puissances occultes, by Count de
Poncins . He points out, for example, that "if we open the
English Masonic Calendar for 1930, we find the Grand Lodge
has official relations with Portugal, Spain, with the remnant of
Italian Freemasonry, and with Latin America." In addition
to the evidence adduced by Count de Poncins, we know that
the English Grand Lodge maintains friendly relations with
the Swiss Grand Lodge, "Alpina," which recognises not only
the Grand Lodge of France but the Grand Orients of France,
Spain and Greece. 4 Thus "between Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry

1 Cf. pp. 206, 207 of The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of
Society, where texts are given.

2 On pages 18-20 of his book, English-Speaking Freemasonry, Sir Alfred
Robbins gives clear proof of the vagueness of meaning of the 'fundamental
Grand Architect of the Universe" as well as of the fact that Freemasonry
is not Christian. He there writes: "The foundations on which English
speaking Freemasonry so long has stood are a reverential belief in the
Eternal, with an inner realization of His revealed will and word. It
recognizes that both belief and revelation exist in many forms. ... In England
many Lodges are entirely composed of ... . Jews."

~ A summary of what he says is given in my book, The Mystical Body of

Christ and the Reorganization of Society, pp. 207-209.
4 Annual of Universal Masonry (1923), pp. 241-242.

21

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

and Latin Freemasonry there are indirect but effective rela-
tions which are far closer than is admitted." 1

When once the disorder of Masonic Naturalism or anti-
Supernaturalism is grasped, we can easily understand its vary-
ing modes of procedure with regard to governments. "With
tongue and pen," declares the Freemason Pike (The Inner
Sanctuary, IV, 547), "with all our open and secret influences,
with the purse and, if need be, with the sword, we will advance
the cause of human progress and labour to enfranchise human
thought, to give freedom to the human conscience (above all
from Papal usurpations) and equal rights to the people
everywhere."

The formation in "tolerance" given in the Lodges aims
not merely at that negative mental state which puts religious
truth and error on the same level, treating them both with
indifference; it aims at the production of a positive hatred of
what it calls the "intolerance" of the Catholic Church, namely
the Catholic Church's insistence on the Divine Plan for order.
The formation in Masonic "tolerance," then, is really a forma-
tion in hatred of the firmness and strength of the Catholic
Church, in standing for the Supernatural Life and order of the
world. This is the ultimate reason why Anglo-Saxon Masonry,
ostensibly so conservative, has constantiy favoured movements
towards the Left, opposed to the true order of the world.

The effect of the ambiguous naturalistic formation of
Masonry in regard to the State, accompanied as it is by de-
nunciations of "tyranny" and "usurpation," corresponding to
the denunciations of "superstition" and "intolerance" in re-
gard to religion, will be to favour the same tendency to the
Left. States will be assailed as "tyrannies" in proportion to
the extent in which they accept Our Lord's Programme for
order. In Catholic countries violent revolution will be always
aimed at in order to get rid of the existing social structure in
which the Kingship of Christ is respected. As, owing to their
rejection of Our Lord's Programme for order, the advent of
Naturalism in Protestant countries is only a question of time,

1 La Dictature des Puissances occultes, p. 236. On page 176 the author gives
a striking example of pressure brought to bear on the Hungarian govern-
ment by American Freemasonry, in order to get Freemasonry restored
in Hungary after the Revolution (1918-1919). Hungarian Freemasonry
had prepared the Revolution, yet the Anglo-Saxon Brothers championed
its cause.

22

Foreword

the terms "tyranny" and "despotism" may not be applied to
them by Masonry as freely as they were to the realms of the
Bourbons and the Hapsburgs.

But the Protestant countries will not be spared, for behind
Freemasonry is the more cohesive naturalistic Force of the
Jewish nation with its Messianic aim of domination over all
nations. Any vestiges of the rule of the True Supernatural
Messias must be swept away. A highly-placed personage,
whose name he does not reveal, said to the distinguished
historian, Cardinal Pitra, at Vienna, in 1889: "The Catholic
nations must be crushed by the Protestant nations. When this
result has been attained, a breath will be sufficient to bring
about the disappearance of Protestantism." Freemasons in
England and the U.S.A. will yield to pressure from leaders of
the Jewish nation, even when the interests of England and the
U.S.A. obviously suffer. The Brooklyn Tablet, May 14, 1949,
quoted the frank statements of the American Senate of Senator
Owen Brewster, of Maine, a non-Catholic. Speaking of the
attitude towards Spain, the Senator said: "Spain is not
recognised because Spain is a Catholic country .... The
subtle word is constantly passed that the alternative to Com-
munism is Catholicism. We know the word is constantly uttered
in the lobbies, although Senators do not care to bring it out
on the floor."

There is not space to treat of the Masonic plan that is
being pursued in Ireland. Six Ulster counties have been
detached from the rest of the country and erected into a State
with a government in which Masonic influence is predominant
(the Orange Society, it must be borne in mind, is a sub-
masonry trained for anti-Catholic action). 1 All the counties
of Ulster were not included in the State lest the Catholics
should have a majority in Parliament. The Catholic Irish
justly resent the partition of their country. Pressure will be
brought to bear upon them to placate the Freemasons by
compromising still further to the Programme of Christ the King
and abandoning the unity and indissolubility of marriage. 2

1 The Home Rule for Ireland Acts of 1914 and 1920, precluded the Irish
Parliaments from any power to "abrogate or prejudicially affect any
privilege or exemption of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Ireland."

2 According to Art. 44 of the Constitution, the Irish State does not acknow-
ledge the Catholic Church, for which our ancestors died, as the One
True Church of Christ.

23

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

Those who are alert know that Senator H. Lehman's
interest in undoing the partition of Ireland is ominous.
He is described in Commonsense of November 15, 1949, as
"a banker-Zionist long friendly to Moscow." 1 If Mgr. Dillon
were alive to-day he would tell the Catholic Irish " to
remember all (heir obligations to Our Divine Lord Jesus
Christ who sustained their fathers through centuries of trial," 2
and to placate Him first, not the Zionists, Communists
and the Freemasons.

On account of the confusion of mind prevalent amongst
Catholics concerning the question of Anti-Semitism, a few
words must be said about it before concluding this Preface.

In the excellent review of my books, The Kingship of
Christ and Organised Naturalism, which appeared in the Jesuit
magazine, La Civilta Cattolica (Rome), in March, 1947, the
reviewer laid special stress on the distinction which I have
been making in all my books. He wrote as follows: "The
author wants a clear distinction to be made between hatred
of the Jewish nation, which is Anti-Semitism, and opposition
to Jewish and Masonic Naturalism. This opposition on the
part of Catholics must be mainly positive by acknowledging,
not only individually but socially, the Rights of the Super-
natural Kingship of Christ and His Church, and by striving
politically to get these Rights acknowledged by States and in
public life. For this indispensable undertaking . . . the active
and effective union of Catholics ... is absolutely necessary."

Space does not allow of lengthy quotations from Papal
documents to show that, on the one hand, the Sovereign Pon-
tiffs insist that Catholics must stand unflinchingly for the
Integral Rights of Christ the King, as contained in the Papal
Encyclicals, while, on the other hand, keeping their minds and
hearts free from hatred of Our Lord's own nation according
to the flesh. On the one hand, they must battle for the Rights
of Christ the King and the Supernatural Organisation of
Society, as laid down in the Encyclical, Quas Primas, un-
equivocally proclaiming that the rejection of Our Lord Jesus

1 Senator Lehman's programme for the union of Ireland under Marxist
domination will undoubtedly be along the lines of The Daily Worker
pamphlet, The Partition of Ireland, June 6, 1949.

2 Cf. the beautiful Prologue to the Irish Constitution.

24

Foreword

Christ, the True Messias, by His own nation, and the unyield-
ing opposition of that nation to Him, are a fundamental source
of disorder and conflict in the world. On the other hand, as
members of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Catholics should neither
hate the members of the nation in which, through our Blessed
Mother, the Lily of Israel, the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity assumed human nature, nor deny them their legitimate
rights as persons. The supernatural elevation of mind and
heart and the unshrinking fortitude that are required from
members of Christ in our day can be maintained only with
the aid of Him who wept over Jerusalem's rejection of order.
It will inevitably mean suffering for Christ's faithful members
as the power of the anti-supernatural Forces in the world in-
creases. Even in the midst of their suffering, however, Christ's
members must bear in mind that there will be a glorious
triumph for Christ the King when, as St. Paul tells us in his
Epistle to the Romans (XI, 11-33), there will be a sincere
return on the part of the Jewish nation to the Mystical Body
of the True Messias. 1

Two reasons can be assigned to the fact that Our Lord's
faithful members will often be betrayed by those who should
be on the side of Christ the King. Firstly, many Catholic
writers speak of Papal condemnations of Anti-Semitism with-
out explaining the meaning of the term, and never even allude
to the documents which insist on the Rights of Our Divine
Lord, Head of the Mystical Body, Priest and King. Thus,
very many are completely ignorant of the duty incumbent on
all Catholics of standing positively for Our Lord's Reign in
society in opposition to Jewish Naturalism. The result is that
numbers of Catholics are so ignorant of Catholic doctrine that
they hurl the accusation of Anti-Semitism against those who
are battling for the Rights of Christ the King, thus effectively
aiding the enemies of Our Divine Lord. Secondly, many
Catholic writers copy unquestioningly what they read in the
naturalistic or anti-Supernatural Press and do not distinguish
between Anti-Semitism in the correct Catholic sense, as ex-
plained above, and "Anti-Semitism," as the Jews understand
it. For the Jews, "Anti-Semitism" is anything that is in op-

The question of the conversion of the Jewish nation has been beautifully
treated by the Jewish convert priest, Canon Augustine Lemann in his
works, Histoire Complete de l'ldee Messianique, L'Avenir de Jerusalem.

25

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

position to the naturalistic Messianic domination of their
nation over all the others. Quite logically, the leaders of the
Jewish nation hold that to stand for the Rights of Christ the
King is to be "Anti-Semitic." 1 The term "Anti-Semitism,"
with all its smear connections in the minds of the unthinking,
is being extended to include any form of opposition to the
Jewish nation's naturalistic aims and any exposure of the
methods they adopt to achieve these aims.

"In our time more than ever before," said the saintly
Pius X at the Beatification of Joan of Arc (Dec. 13, 1908),
"the greatest asset of the evil-disposed is the cowardice and
weakness of good men, and all the vigour of Satan's reign is
due to the easy-going weakness of Catholics. Oh! if I might
ask the Divine Redeemer, as the Prophet Zachary did in
spirit: What are those wounds in the midst of Thy hands? the
answer would not be doubtful. With these I was wounded in
the house of them that loved me. I was wounded by my friends,
who did nothing to defend me, and who, on every occasion,
made themselves the accomplices of my adversaries. And
this reproach can be levelled at the weak and timid Catholics
of all countries."

DENIS FAHEY, C.S.Sp.

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

June 16, 1950.

The Jewish writer, B. Lazare, expressed that quite clearly: "The Jew,"
he said, "is the living testimony of the disappearance of the State founded
on theological principles, and which the Christian Anti-Semites dream of
reconstructing." {L'Anti-Semitisme, p. 361. Italics mine).

26

I

GOOD VERSUS EVIL

SPEAKING of the operative classes, Leo XIII says, in his
celebrated Encyclical Humanum Genus: "Those who sustain
themselves by the labour of their own hands, besides being
by their very condition most worthy above all others of
charity and consolation, are also especially exposed to the
allurements of men whose ways lie in fraud and deceit.
Therefore, they ought to be helped with the greatest possible
kindness, and invited to join societies that are good, lest
they be drawn away to others that are evil."

In this, as in all matters of importance, "to be fore-
warned is to be forearmed," and it is specially necessary to
be forewarned when we have to contend with an adversary
who uses secrecy, fraud and deceit. We shall see then, that
all the organizations of Atheism appear at first as does their
author, Satan, clothed in the raiment of angels of light,
with their malignity, their Infidelity, and their ultimate
designs always most carefully hidden. They come amongst
all the faithful but more especially amongst young men,
to seduce and to ruin them, never showing but when forced
to do so, the cloven foot, and employing a million means
to seem to be what they are not. It is, therefore, first of all,
necessary to unmask them; and this is precisely what the
Supreme Pontiff asks the pastors of the Universal Fold to
do as the best means of destroying their influence, "But," he
says in the Encyclical already quoted, "as it befits our pastoral
office that we ourselves should point out some suitable way
of proceeding, we wish it to be your rule, first of all, to tear
away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it
really is, and by instructions and pastoral letters to instruct the
people as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seduc-
ing men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the
depravity of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts."

In this extract the Holy Father makes special mention of
Freemasonry; but, remember, not of Freemasonry only. He
speaks of "other secret societies." These other secret societies

27

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

are identical with Freemasonry, no matter by what name they
may be called; and they are frequently the most depraved
forms of Freemasonry. And though what is known in Great
Britain as Freemasonry may not be so malignant as its kind
is on the Continent — though it may have little or no hold
at all upon the mass of Catholics in English-speaking countries,
still we shall see that like every secret society in existence it is
a danger for the nation and for individuals, and has hidden
within it the same Atheism and hostility to Christianity which
the worst Continental Freemasonry possesses. These it develops
to the initiated in the higher degrees, and makes manifest
to all the world in time. The truth is that every secret society
is framed and adapted to make men the enemies of God
and of his Church, and to subvert faith; and there is not
one, no matter on what pretext it may be founded, which does
not fall under the management of a supreme directory
governing all the secret societies on earth. The one aim of this
directory is to uproot Christianity, and the Christian social
order as well as the Church from the world — in fact, to
eradicate the name of Christ and the very Christian idea
from the minds and the hearts of men. This it is determined to
do by every means, but especially by fraud and force; that is
by first using wiles and deceit until the Atheistic conspiracy
grows strong enough for measures as violent and remorseless
in all countries as it exercised in one country during the first
French Revolution. I believe this secret Atheistic organisation
to be nothing less than the evil which we have been long
warned against by Our Blessed Lord Himself, as the supreme
conflict between the Church and Satan's followers. It is the
commencement of the contest which must take place between
Christ and Antichrist; and nothing therefore can be more
necessary than that the elect of God should be warned of its
nature and its aims. First we shall glance at the rise and the
nature of Atheism itself and its rapid advance amongst those
sections of Christians most liable from position and surround-
ings to be led astray by it; and then at the use it has made
of Freemasonry for its propagandism, and for its contemplated
destruction of Christianity. We shall see its depravity perfected
by what is called Illuminism. And we shall see that however
checked it may have been by the reaction consequent upon
the excesses of its first Revolution, it has not only outlived

28

Good Versus Evil

that reaction, but has grown wiser for doing an evil more
extended and more complete. We shall see how its chiefs
have succeeded in mastering and directing every kind of
secret association whether springing from itself or coming
into existence by the force of its example only; and have used,
and are using them all to its advantage. We shall see the sleep-
less vigilance which this organized Atheism exercises; and
thus come to know that our best, our only resource, is to fly
its emissaries, and draw nearer in affection and in effect
to the teachings of the Church and her Supreme Visible
Head on earth who can never deceive us, and whom the
hosts of Satan never can deceive. We shall see that the voice
of the Vicar of Christ has been raised against secret associations
from the beginning to this hour, and that the directions
which we receive from that infallible voice can alone save
us from the wiles and deceits of a conspiracy so formidable,
so active, so malignant, and so dangerous.

29

II

THE RISE OF ATHEISM IN EUROPE

IN order, then, to comprehend thoroughly the nature of the
conspiracy, it will be necessary to go back to the opening
of the last century and contemplate the rise and advance
of the Atheism and Anti-Christianity which it now spreads
rapidly through the earth. As that century opened it disclosed
a world suffering from a multitude of evils. The so-called
Reformation, which arose and continued to progress during
the two preceding centuries had well nigh run its course.
The principle of private judgment introduced in apparent
zeal for the pure worship and doctrine of Christ, had ended
in leaving no part of the teaching of Christ unchallenged.
It had rendered His Divinity disbelieved in, and His very
existence doubted, by many who yet called themselves His
followers. Socinus and his nephew had succeeded in binding
the various groups of Polish and German Protestants in a
league where nothing was required but undying hatred
and opposition to the Catholic Church. Bayle threw doubt
upon everything, and Spinosa destroyed the little respect
left for the Deity in the system of Socinus, by introducing
Pantheism to the world. In effect, both the Deists and the
Pantheists of that period were Atheists. Whether they held
that everything was God, or that God was not such a God
as Christians hold Him to be, they did away with belief in
the true God, and raised up an impossible being of their
own imagination in His stead. In life, in conduct, and in
adoration of God, they were practical Atheists, and soon
manifested that hatred for the truth which the Atheist is
sure to possess. Their theories made headway early in the
century throughout Central Europe and England. Boling-
broke, Shaftesbury, and the elite amongst the statesmen and
literary aristocracy of the reign of Queen Anne were Infidels.
Tindal, Collins, Wolston, Toland, and Chubbs were as
advanced as Tom Payne was, later on, in the way of Atheism.
But however much England and Germany had advanced
their Protestantism to what was called Free-thinking, both

30

The Rise of Atheism in Europe

were soon destined to be eclipsed in that sad progress by
Catholic and monarchical France. France owes this evil
pre-eminence to one individual, who, though largely assisted
in his road to rain by Bayle, and subsequently by association
with English Infidels, had yet enough of innate wickedness
in himself to outstrip them all. That individual was Voltaire.

31

Ill

VOLTAIRE

THE career of this abandoned, unhappy, but most extra-
ordinary man is the subject of this chapter. It was in his day
and by his means that Atheism became perfected, generalized,
and organized for the destruction of Christianity, Christian
civilization, and all religion. He was the first, and remains
still, the greatest of its Apostles. There is not one of its dark
principles which he did not teach and advocate; and from
his writings, and by their means, the intellectual and every
other form of war against the Catholic Church and the
cause of Christ are carried on to this day and will be to
the end. His real name was Francis Mary Arouet, but,
for some reason which has never been clearly explained,
he chose to call himself Voltaire. He was the son of good
parents, and by position and education should have been an
excellent Catholic. He was trained by the very Jesuits whom
he afterwards so hated and persecuted. He was destined for
the profession of the law, and made good progress in literary
studies. But the corruption of the age in which he lived soon
seized upon him, overmastered him, and bore him along in a
current which in his case did not end in vice only, but in vice
which sought its own justification in Infidelity. From the
beginning, the fool said in his heart "there is no God," and in
the days of Voltaire the number of these fools was indeed
infinite. Never before was vice so rampant in countries call-
ing themselves Christian. If the Gospel was preached at all
in that age it was certainly to the poor; for the rich, as a rule
— to which there were, thank God, many exceptions — seemed
so sunk in vice as not to believe in a particle of it. The Courts
of Europe were, in general, corrupt to the core; and the Court
of the Most Christian King was perhaps the most abandoned,
in a wide sense, of them all. The Court of Catherine of
Russia a scene of unblushing lewdness. The Court of Frederick
of Prussia was so corrupt, that it cannot be described without
doing violence to decency, and even to humanity. The
Regent Orleans and Louis XV had carried licence to such

32

Voltaire

an extent as to render the Court of Versailles a veritable
pandemonium. The vices of royalty infected the nobles
and all others who were so unfortunate as to be permitted
to frequent Courts. Vice, in fact, was the fashion, and
numbers of all classes, not excepting the poorest, wallowed
in it. As a consequence, the libertines of the period hated
the Church, which alone, amidst the universal depravity,
raised her voice for purity. They took up warmly, therefore,
the movements which, within or without her pale, were
likely to do her damage. With a sure instinct they sided
in France with Gallicanism and Jansenism; and they welcomed
the new Infidelity which came over from England and
Germany, with unconcealed gladness. Voltaire appeared in
French society at this most opportune moment for the advance-
ment of their views. Witty, sarcastic, gay, vivacious, he
soon made his way amongst the voluptuaries who then
filled Paris. His conduct and habit of ridiculing religion
and royalty brought him, however, into disfavour with the
Government, and at the age of twenty-seven we find him in the
Bastille. Liberated from this prison in 1727, but only on
condition of exile, he crossed over to England, where he finally
adopted those Infidel and anti-Christian principles which
made him, for the half century through which he afterwards
lived, what Cretineau-Joly 1 very justly calls "the most perfect
incarnation of Satan that the world ever saw." The Society of
Freemasons was just then perfected in London, and Voltaire
at the instance of his Infidel associates joined one of its lodges;
and he left England, where he had been during the years
1726-27 and 28, an adept in both Infidelity and Freemasonry.
He returned to the Continent with bitterness rankling in his
breast against Monarchical Government which had im-
prisoned and exiled him, against the Bastille where he was
immured, and, above all, against the Catholic Church and
her Divine Founder. Christ and His Church condemned his
excesses and to the overthrow of both he devoted himself
with an ardour and a malignity more characteristic, certainly,
of a demon than of a man.

A master of French prose hardly ever equalled and never

1 L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, par J. Cretineau-Joly, ouvrage
compose sur des documents inedits et orne des portraits de Leurs Saintete's
Les Papes Pie VII. Et Pie IX. dessines per Stall. Paris, 1861.

33

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

perhaps excelled, and a graceful and correct versifier, his
writings against morality and religion grew into immense
favour with the corrupt reading-public of his day. He was a
perfect adept in the use of ridicule, and he employed it with
remorseless and blasphemous force against everything pure
and sacred. He had as little respect for the honour or welfare
of his country as he had for the sanctity of religion. His ruffian
pen attacked the fair fame of the Maid of Orleans with as little
scruple as it cast shame upon the consecrated servants of
Christ. For Christ he had but one feeling — eternal, contemp-
tuous hatred. His watchword, the concluding lines of all his
letters to his infidel confederates, was for fifty years e'crasons
nous l'infame, "let us crush the wretch", meaning Christ and
his cause. This he boasted was his delenda est Carthago. And
he believed he could succeed. "I am tired," said he, "of
hearing it said that twelve men sufficed to establish Christi-
anity, and I desire to show that it requires but one man to
pull it down." A lieutenant of police once said to him that,
notwithstanding all he wrote, he should never be able to
destroy Christianity. "That is exactly what we shall see,"
he replied. Voltaire was never weary of using his horrible
watch-word.

Upon the news of the suppression of the Jesuits reaching
him, he exclaimed: "See, one head of the hydra has fallen. I
lift my eyes to heaven and cry 'crush the wretch'." We have
from himself his reason for using these blasphemous words.
He says, "I finish all my letters by saying 'Ecrasons l'infame,
ecrasez l'infame." 'Let us crush the wretch, crush the wretch,'
as Cato used one time to say, Delenda est Carthago, Carthage
must be destroyed." Even at a time when the miscreant
protested the greatest respect for religion to the Court of Rome,
he wrote to Damilaville: "We embrace the philosophers,
and we beseech them to inspire for the wretch all the horror
which they can. Let us fall upon the wretch ably. That
which most concerns me is the propagation of the faith
of truth, and the making of the wretch vile, Delenda est
Carthago."

Certainly his determination was strong to do so; and he
left no stone unturned for that end. He was a man of amazing
industry; and though his vanity caused him to quarrel with
many of his confreres, he had in his lifetime a large school of

34

Voltaire

disciples, which became still more numerous after his death.
He sketched out for them the whole mode of procedure against
the Church. His policy as revealed by the correspondence of
Frederick II, and others 1 with him, was not to commence an
immediate persecution, but first to suppress the Jesuits and all
Religious orders, and to secularize their goods; then to deprive
the Pope of temporal authority, and the Church of property
and state recognition. Primary and higher-class education of
a lay and Infidel character was to be established, the principle
of divorce affirmed, and respect for ecclesiastics lessened and
destroyed. Lastly, when the whole body of the Church should
be sufficiendy weakened and Infidelity strong enough, the final
blow was to be dealt by the sword of open, relentless persecu-
tion. A reign of terror was to spread over the whole earth,
and to continue while a Christian should be found obstinate
enough to adhere to Christianity. This, of course, was to be
followed by a Universal Brotherhood without marriage,
family, property, God, or law, in which all men would reach
that level of social degradation aimed at by the disciples of
Saint Simon, and carried into practice whenever possible, as
attempted by the French Commune.

In the carrying out of his infernal designs against religion
and society, Voltaire had as little scruple in using lying and
hypocrisy as Satan himself is accredited with. In his attacks

1 To show how early the confederates of Voltaire had determined upon
the gradual impoverishment of the Church and the suppression of the
Religious orders, the following letters from Frederick II, will be of use.
In the first dated 13th August, 1775, the Monarch writes to the then very
aged "Patriarch of Ferney," who had demanded the secularization of the
Rhine ecclesiastical electorates and other episcopal benefices in Germany,
as follows: —

"All you say concerning our German bishops is but too true; they
grow fat upon the tithes of Sion. But you know, also, that in the Holy
Roman Empire the ancient usage, the Bull of Gold, and other antique
follies, cause abuses established to be respected. If we wish to diminish
fanaticism we must not touch the bishops. But, if we manage to diminish
the monks, especially the mendicant orders, the people will grow cold and
less superstitious, they will permit the powers that be, to dispose of the
bishops in the manner best suited to the good of each State. This is the
only course to follow. To undermine silently and without noise the edifice
of infatuation is to oblige it to fall of itself. The Pope, seeing the situation
in which he finds himself, is obliged to give briefs and bulls as his dear sons
demand of him. The power founded upon the ideal credit of the faith
loses in proportion as the latter diminishes. If there were now found at the
head of nations some ministers above vulgar prejudices, the Holy Father
would become bankrupt. Without doubt posterity will enjoy the advantage
of being able to think freely."

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

upon religion he falsified history and fact. He made a principle
of lying, and taught the same vice to his followers. Writing
to his disciple Theriot, he says (Oeuvres, vol. 52, p. 326):
"Lying is a vice when it does evil. It is a great virtue when
it does good. Be therefore more virtuous than ever. It is
necessary to lie like a devil, not timidly and for a time, but
boldly and always."

He was also, as the school he left behind has been ever
since, a hypocrite. Infidel to the heart's core, he could, when-
ever it suited his purpose, both practice, and even feign a zeal
for religion. On the expectation of a pension from the King,
he wrote to M. Axgental, a disciple of his, who reproached
him with his hypocrisy and contradictions in conduct. "If I
had a hundred thousand men I know well what I would do;
but as I have not got them I will go to communion at Easter
and you may call me a hypocrite as long as you like." And
Voltaire, on getting his pension, went to communion the year
following 1 . It is needless to say that he was in life, as well as
in his writings, immoral as it was possible for a man to be.
He lived without shame and even ostentatiously in open
adultery. He laughed at every moral restraint. He preached
libertinage and practised it. He was the guest and the
inmate of the Court of Frederick of Prussia, where crime
reached proportions impossible to speak of. And lastly,
coward, liar, hypocrite, and panderer to the basest passions of
humanity, he was finally, like Satan, a murderer if he had the
power to be so. Writing to Damilaville, he says, "The Christian
religion is an infamous religion, an abominable hydra which
must be destroyed by a hundred invisible hands. It is necessary
that the philosophers should course through the streets to
destroy it as missionaries course over earth and sea to propa-
gate it. They ought to dare all things, risk all things, even
to be burned, in order to destroy it. Let us crush the wretch!

1 In 1768 Voltaire wrote as follows to the Marquis de Villevielle: —
"No, my dear Marquis, no, the modern Socrates will not drink the hemlock.
The Socrates of Athens was, between you and me, a pitiless caviller, who
made himself a thousand enemies and who braved his judges very foolishly.
"Our modern philosophers are more adroit. They nave not the foolish
and dangerous vanity to put their names to their works. Theirs are the
invisible hands which pierce fanaticism from one end of Europe to the
other with the arrows of truth. Damilaville recently died. He was the
author of 'Christianism unveiled,' and many other writings. No one ever
knew him."

36

Voltaire

Crush the wretch!" His doctrine thus expressed found fatal
effect in the French Revolution, and it will obtain effect
whenever his disciples are strong enough in men and means to
act. I have no doubt his teachings have led to all the revolu-
tions of this century, and will lead to the final attack of Atheism
on the Church. Nor was his hatred confined to Catholicism
only. Christians of every denomination were marked out for
destruction by him; and our separated Christian brethren,
who feel glad at seeing his followers triumph over the Church,
might well ponder on these words of his: "Christians," he says,
"of every form of profession, are beings exceedingly injurious,
fanatics, thieves, dupes, imposters, who lie together with their
gospels, enemies of the human race." And of the system itself
he writes: "The Christian religion is evidently false, the
Christian religion is a sect which every good man ought to
hold in horror. It cannot be approved of even by those to
whom it gives power and honour." In fact, since his day, it
has been a cardinal point of policy with his followers to take
advantage of the unfortunate differences between the various
sects of Christians in the world and the Church, in order to
rain both; for the destruction of every form of Christianity, as
well as Catholicism, was the aim of Voltaire, and remains as
certainly the aim of his disciples. They place, of course, the
Church and the Vicar of Christ in the first line of attack, well
knowing that if the great Catholic unity could be destroyed,
the work of eradicating every kind of separated Christianity
would be easy. In dealing, therefore, with such a foe as
modern Atheism, so powerfully organized, as we shall see it
to be, Protestants as well as Catholics should guard against its
wiles and deceits. They should, at least, regarding questions
such as the religious education of rising generations, the
attempted secularisation of the Sabbath and state-established
Christian Institutions, and the recognition of religion by the
State, all of which the Atheism of the world now attempts
to destroy, present an unbroken front of determined union.
Nothing less, certainly, can save even the Protestantism, the
national, Christian character of Great Britain and her colonies
from impending ruin.

Although Voltaire was as confirmed and malignant a
hater of Christ and of Christianity as ever lived, still he showed
from time to time that his own professed principles of Infidelity

37

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

were never really believed in by himself. In health and
strength he cried out his blasphemous "crush the wretch!"
but when the moment came for his soul to appear before the
judgment-seat of "the wretch," his faith was shown and his
vaunted courage failed him.

The miscreant always acted against his better knowledge.
His life gives us many examples of this fact. I will relate one
for you. When he broke a blood vessel on one occasion, he
begged his assistants to hurry for the priest. He confessed,
signed with his hand a profession of faith, asked pardon of
God and the Church for his offences, and ordered that his
retraction should be printed in the public newspapers; but,
recovering, he commenced his war upon God anew, and died
refusing all spiritual aid, and crying out in the fury of despair
and agony, "I am abandoned by God and man." Dr. Fruchen,
who witnessed the awful spectacle of his death, said to his
friends, "Would that all who had been seduced by the writings
of Voltaire had been witness of his death, it would be im-
possible to hold out, in the face of such an awful spectacle." 1
But that spectacle was forgotten, and consequently, before ten
years passed, the world saw the effects of his works.

Speaking of the French Revolution, Condorcet, in his
"Life of Voltaire," says of him, "He did not see all that which
he accomplished, but he did all that which we see. Enlightened
observations prove to those who know how to reflect that the
first author of that Great Revolution was without doubt
Voltaire."

It never was the intention of this man to let his teachings
die, or beat the air, so to speak, with mere words. He deter-
mined that his fatal gospel should be perpetuated, and should
bring forth as speedy as possible its fruits of death. Even in
his lifetime, we have evidence that he constantly conspired
with his associates for this end, and that with them he con-
cocted in secret both the means by which his doctrines should
reach all classes in Europe, and the methods by which civil
order and Christianity might be best destroyed. St. Beuve
writes of him and of his, in the Journal des Debats, 8 November,
1852: — "All the correspondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert
is ugly. It smells of the sect, of the conspiracy of the Brother-

1 See Le Secret de la Franc-Maconnerie, by Mgr. A. J. Fava, Bishop of
Grenoble, Lille, 1883, p. 38.

38

Voltaire

hood, of the secret society. From whatever point it is viewed
it does no honour to men who make a principle of lying, and
who consider contempt of their kind the first condition
necessary to enlighten them. "Enlighten and despise the
human race.' A sure watchword this, and it is theirs. 'March
on always sneering, my brethren, in the way of truth.' That
is their perpetual refrain'." But not only did he and his thus
conspire in a manner which might seem to arise naturally
from identical sentiments and aims, but what was of infinitely
greater consequence, the demon, just as their sad gospel
was ripe for propagation, called into existence the most
efficacious means possible for its extension amongst men, and
for the wished-for destruction of the Church, of Christian
civilization, and of every form of existing Christianity. This
was the spread amongst those already demoralized by
Voltaireanism, of Freemasonry and its cognate systems of
secret Atheistic organisation.

39

IV

FREEMASONRY

FREEMASONRY, we must remember always, appeared generally
and spread generally, too, in the interests of all that Voltaire
aimed at, when it best suited his purpose. The first lodge
established in France under the English obedience was in
1727. Its founder and first master was the celebrated Jacobite,
Lord Derwentwater. It had almost immediate acceptance
from the degenerate nobility of France, who, partly because
of the influence of English and Scotch Jacobite nobles, and
partly because of its novelty, hard swearing, and mystery,
joined the strange institution. Its lodges were soon in every
considerable city of the realm. The philosophers and various
schools of Atheists, however, were the first to enter into and
to extend it. For them it had special attractions and special
uses, which they were not slow to appreciate and to employ.
Now, though it very little concerns us to know much of the
origin of this society, which became then and since so notorious
throughout the world, still, as that origin throws some light
on its subsequent history, it will not be lost time to glance at
what is known, or supposed to be known, about it. Mgr.
Segur, 1 Bishop of Grenoble, who devoted much time to a
study of Freemasonry, is persuaded that it was first elaborated
by Faustus Socinus, the nephew of the too celebrated Laelius
Socinus, the heresiarch and founder of the sect of Unitarians
or, as they are generally called after him, Socinians. Both were
of the ancient family of the Sozini of Sienna. Faustus, like
many of his relatives, imbibed the errors of his uncle, and in
order to escape the vigilance of the Inquisition, to which
both Italy and Spain owed much of the tranquility they
enjoyed in these troublesome times, he fled to France. While
in that country at Lyons, and when only twenty years of
age, he heard of the death of his uncle at Zurich, and went
at once to that city to obtain the papers and effects of the
deceased. From the papers he found that Laelius had assisted
at a conference of Heretics at Vicenza in 1547, in which the

1 Opus cit. p. 8.

40

Freemasonry

destruction of Christianity was resolved upon, and where
resolutions were adopted for the renewal of Arianism — a
system of false doctrine calculated to sap the very foundations
of existing Faith by attacking the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Feller, an authority of considerable weight, in his reference
to this conference, says: "In the assembly of Vicenza they
agreed upon the means of destroying the religion of Jesus
Christ, by forming a society which by its progressive successes
brought on, towards the end of the eighteenth century, an
almost general apostasy. When the Republic of Venice
became informed of this conspiracy, it seized upon Julian
Trevisano and Francis de Rugo, and strangled them, Ochinus
and the others saved themselves. The society thus dispersed
became only the more dangerous, and it is that which is
known to-day under the name of Freemasons." For this
information Feller refers us to a work entitled Le Voile Leve,
by the Abbe Le Franc, a victim of the reign of terror in 1792.
The latter tells us that the conspirators whom the severity
of the Venetian Republic had scattered, and who were
Ochinus, Laelius Socinus, Peruta, Gentilis, Jacques Chiari,
Francis Lenoir, Darius Socinus, Alicas, and the Abbe Leonard,
carried their poison with them, and caused it to bear fruits
of death in all parts of Europe. The success of Faustus
Socinus in spreading his uncle's theories was enormous. His
aim was not only to destroy the Church, but to raise up
another temple into which any enemy of orthodoxy might
freely enter. In this temple every heterodox belief might be
held. It was called Christian but was without Christian faith,
or hope, or love. It was simply an astutely planned system
for propagating the ideas of its founders; for a fundamental
part of the policy of Socinus, and one in which he well in-
structed his disciples, was to associate either to Unitarianism
or to the confederation formed at Vicenza, the rich, the
learned, the powerful, and the influential of the world. He
feigned an equal esteem for Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians,
for Lutherans and Calvinists. He praised the undertakings
of all against the Church of Rome, and working upon their
intense hatred for Catholicism, caused them to forget their
many "isms" in order to unite them for the destruction of
the common enemy. When that should be effected, it would
be time to consider a system agreeable to all. Until then,

41

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

unity of action inspired by hatred of the Church should reign
amongst them.

He therefore wished that all his adherents should, whether
Lutheran or Calvinist, treat one another as brothers; and
hence his disciples have been called at various times "United
Brethren," "Polish Brothers," "Moravian Brothers," "Brother
Masons," and finally "Freemasons." Mgr. Segur informs us,
on the authorities before quoted, as well as upon that of
Bergier, and the learned author of a work entitied, Les Franc
Macons Ecrases — the Abbe Lerudan — printed at Amsterdam,
as early as the year 1747, that the real secret of Freemasonry
consisted, even then, in disbelief in the Divinity of Christ,
and a determination to replace that doctrine, which is the
very foundation of Christianity, by Naturalism or Rationalism.
Socinus having established his Sect in Poland, sent emissaries
to preach his doctrines stealthily in Germany, Holland, and
England. In Germany, Protestants and Catholics united to
unmask them. In Holland they blended with the Anabaptists,
and in England they found partisans amongst the Independents
and various other sects into which the people were divided.

The Abbe Lefranc believes (Le Voile Leve, Lyons, 1821),
that Oliver Cromwell was a Socinian, and that he introduced
Freemasonry into England. Certainly, Cromwell's sympathies
were not for the Church favoured by the monarch he sup-
planted, and were much with the Independents. If he was a
Socinian, we can easily understand how the secret society of
Vicenza could have attractions for one of his anti-Catholic
and ambitious sentiments. He gave its members in England,
as Mgr. Segur tells us, the title of Freemasons, and invented
the allegory of the Temple of Solomon, now so much used
by Masonry of every kind, and which meant the original state
of man supposed to be a commonwealth of equality with a
vague Deism as its religion. This temple, destroyed by Christ
for the Christian order, was to be restored by Freemasonry
after Christ and the Christian order should be obliterated by
conspiracy and revolution. The state of Nature was the
"Hiram" whose murder Masonry was to avenge; and which,
having previously removed Christ, was to resuscitate Hiram,
by re-building the temple of Nature as it had been before.

Mgr. Segur, moreover, connects modern Freemasonry
with the Jews and Templars, as well as with Socinus. There

42

Freemasonry

are reasons which lead me to think that he is right in doing so.
The Jews for many centuries previous to the Reformation had
formed secret societies for their own protection and for the
destruction of the Christianity which persecuted them, and
which they so much hated. The rebuilding of the Temple of
Solomon was the dream of their lives. It is unquestionable
that they wished to make common cause with other bodies of
persecuted religionists. They had special reason to welcome
with joy such heretics as were cast off by Catholicism. It is,
therefore, not at all improbable that they admitted into their
secret conclaves some at least of the discontented Templars,
burning for revenge upon those who dispossessed and sup-
pressed the Order. That fact would account for the curious
combination of Jewish and conventual allusions to be found
in modern Masonry. Then, as to its British History, we have

1 Gougenot des Mousseaux, in his work Le Juif, le Judaisme et la
Judaisation des Peuples Chretiens (Paris 1869), has brought together a great
number of indications on the relations of the high chiefs of Masonry
with Judaism. He thus concludes: — "Masonry, that immense association,
the rare initiates of which, that is to say, the real chiefs of which, whom
we must be careful not to confound with the nominal chiefs, live in a
strict and intimate alliance with the militant members of Judaism, princes
and imitators of the high Cabal. For that elite of the order — these real chiefs
whom so few of the initiated know, or whom they only know for the most
part under a nom de guerre, are employed in the profitable and secret depen-
dence of the cabalistic Israelites. And this phenomenon is accomplished
thanks to the habits of rigorous discretion to which they subject themselves
by oaths and terrible menaces; thanks also to the majority of Jewish
members which the mysterious constitution of Masonry seats in its sovereign
counsel."

M. Cretineau-Joly gives a very interesting account of the correspon-
dence between Nubius and an opulent German Jew who supplied him
with money for the purposes of nis dark intrigues against the Papacy.
The Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact
everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by
Masonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point
to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers. It is easy to conceive
how such a society could be thought necessary to protect them from
Christianity in power. It is easy also to understand how the one darling
object of their lives is the rebuilding of the Temple. Who knows but
behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on
Christians to persecute the Church and to destroy it, there lies a hidden
hope to reconstruct their Temple, and at the darkest depths of secret
society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks to a return
to the land of Juda and to the re-building of the Temple of Jerusalem.
One of the works which Antichrist will do, it is said, is to re-unite the Jews,
and to proclaim himself as their long looked-for Messias. As it is now
generally believed that he is to come from Masonry and to be of it, this
is not improbable, for in it he will find the Jews the most inveterate haters
of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the fittest to establish his reign.

43

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

seen that numbers of the secret brotherhood of Socinus made
their way to England and Scotland, where they found rich
friends, and, perhaps, confederates. I have, therefore, no
doubt but that the Abbe Lefranc is correct when he says that
Cromwell was connected with them. At least, before he suc-
ceeded in his designs, he had need of some such secret society,
and would, no doubt, be glad to use it for his purposes. But
it is not so clear that Cromwell was the first, as Lefranc
thinks, to blend that brotherhood with the real Freemasons.
The ancient guild of working masons had existed in Great
Britain and in Europe for many centuries previous to his time
They were like every other guild of craftsmen — a body formed
for mutual protection and trade offices. But they differed
from other tradespeople in this, that from their duties they
were more cosmopolitan, and knew more of the ceremonies
of religion at a period when the arts of reading and writing
were not very generally understood. They travelled over every
portion of England and Scotland, and frequently crossed the
Channel, to work at the innumerable religious houses, castles,
fortifications, great abbeys, churches and cathedrals which
arose over the face of Christendom in such number and splen-
dour in the middle and succeeding ages. To keep away inter-
lopers, to sustain a uniform rate of wages, to be known
amongst strangers, and, above all, amongst foreigners of their
craft, signs were necessary; and these signs could be of value
only in proportion to the secrecy with which they were kept
within the craft itself. They had signs for those whom they
accepted as novices, for the companion mason or journeyman,
and for the masters of the craft. In ages when a trade was
transmitted from father to son, and formed a kind of family
inheritance, we can very well imagine that its secrets were
guarded with much jealousy, and that its adepts were enjoined
not to communicate them to anyone, not even to their wives,
lest they become known to outsiders. The masons were, if we
except the clockmakers and jewellers, the most skilled artisans
of Europe. By the cunning of their hands they knew how to
make the rough stone speak out the grand conceptions of the
architects of the middle ages; and often, the delicate foliage
and flowers and statuary of the fanes they built, remind us of
the most perfect eras of Greek and Roman sculpture. So
closely connected with religion and religious architecture as

44

Freemasonry

were these "Brothers Masons," "Friars," "Fra," or "Free
Masons," they shared to a large extent in the favour of the
Popes. They obtained many and valuable charters. But they
degenerated. The era of the so-called Reformation was a sad
epoch for them. It was an era of Church demolition rather
than of Church building. Wherever the blight of Protestantism
fell, the beauty and stateliness of Church architecture became
dwarfed, stunted, and degraded, whenever it was not utterly
destroyed. The need of Brothers Masons had passed, and suc-
ceeding Masons began to admit men to their guilds who won
a living otherwise than by the craft. In Germany their con-
fraternity had become a cover for the reformers, and Socinus,
seeing it as a means for advancing his Sect — a method for
winning adepts and progressing stealthily without attracting
the notice of Catholic government — would desire no doubt to
use it for his purposes. We have to this day the statute the
genuine Freemasons of Strasbourg framed in 1462, and the
same revised as late as 1563, but in them there is absolutely
nothing of heresy or hostility to the Church. But there is a
curious document called the Charter of Cologne dated 1535,
which, if it be genuine, proves to us that there existed at that
early period a body of Freemasons having principles identical
with those professed by the Masons of our own day. It is to
be found in the archives of the Mother Lodge of Amsterdam
which also preserves the act of its own constitution under the
date of 1519. It reveals the existence of lodges of kindred
intent in London, Edinburgh, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris,
Lyons, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Madrid,
Venice, Goriz, Koenigsberg, Brussels, Dantzig, Magdeburg,
Bremen and Cologne; and it bears the signatures of well-known
enemies of the Church at that period, namely — Hermanus or
Herman de Weir, the immoral and heretical Archbishop-
Elector of Cologne, placed for his misdeeds under the ban of
the Empire; De Coligny, leader of the Huguenots of France;
Jacob dAnville, Prior of the Augustinians of Cologne, who
incurred the same reproaches as Archbishop Herman; Melanc-
thon, the Reformer; Nicholas Van Noot, Carlton, Bruce,
Upson, Banning, Vireaux, Schroeder, Hoffman, Nobel, De la
Torre, Doria, Uttenbow, Falck, Huissen, Wormer. These
names reveal both the country and the celebrity of all the
men who signed the document. It was, possibly, a society

45

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

like theirs, which the Venetian Government broke up and
scattered in 1547, for we find distinct mention of a lodge exist-
ing at Venice in 1535. However this may be, Freemason lodges
existed in Scotland from the time of the Reformation. One of
them is referred to in the Charter of Cologne, and doubtless
had many affiliations. In Scotland, as in other Catholic coun-
tries, the Templars were suppressed; and there, if nowhere
else, that Order had the guilds of working masons under its
special protection. It is therefore possible, as some say, that
the knights coalesced with these Masons, and protected their
own machinations with the aid of the secrets of the craft. But
while this and all else stated regarding the connection of the
Templars with Masonry may be true, there is no real evidence
that it is so. Much is said about the building of the Temple
of Solomon; and that the Hiram killed, and whose death the
craft is to avenge, means James Molay, the Grand Master, exe-
cuted in the barbarous manner of his age for supposed com-
plicity in the crimes with which the Templars were everywhere
charged. There is tall talk about such things in modern
Masonry, and a great deal of the absurd and puerile ritual in
which the sect indulges when conferring the higher grades, is
supposed to have reference to them. But the Freemasonry
with which we have to deal, however connected in its origin
with the Templars, with Socinus, with the conspirators of
Cologne, or those of Vicenza, or with Cromwell, received its
modern characteristics from Elias Ashmole, the Antiquary,
and the provider, if not the founder, of the Oxford Museum.
Ashmole was an alchemist and an astrologer, and imbued
consequently with a love for the jargon and mysticism of that
strange body so busied about the philosopher's stone and
other Utopias. The existing lodges of the Freemasons had an
inexpressible charm for Ashmole, and in 1646 he, together
with Colonel Mainwaring, became members of the craft. He
perfected it, added various mystic symbols to those already in
use and gave partly a scriptural, partly an Egyptian form to
its jargon and ceremonies. The Rosecroix, Rosicrucian degree,
a society formed after the idea of Bacon's New Atlantis,
appeared; and the various grades of companion, master, secret
master, perfect master, elect, and Irish master, were either
remodelled or newly formed, as we know them now. Charles I
was decapitated in 1649, and Ashmole being a Royalist to the

46

Freemasonry

core, soon turned English Masonry from the purposes of
Cromwell and his party, and made the craft, which was always
strong in Scotland, a means to upset the Government of the
Protector and to bring back the Stuarts. Now "Hiram."
became the murdered Charles, who was to be avenged instead
of James Molay, and the reconstruction of the Temple meant
the restoration of the exiled House of Stuart. On the accession
of Charles II the craft was, of course, not treated with dis-
favour; and when the misfortunes of James II drove him from
the throne, the partisans of the House of Stuart had renewed
recourse to it as a means of secret organization against the
enemy.

To bring back the Pretender, the Jacobites formed a
Scotch and an English and an Irish constitution. The English
constitution embraced the Mother Lodge of York and that of
London, which latter separated from York, and with a new
spring of action started into life as the Grand Lodge of London
in 1717. The Jacobite nobles brought it to France chiefly to
aid their attempts in favour of the Stuarts. They opened a
lodge called the "Amity and Fraternity," in Dunkirk, in 1721,
and in 1725 the Lord Derwentwater opened the famous Mother
Lodge of Paris. Masonry soon spread to Holland (1730), to
Germany in 1736, to Ireland in 1729, and afterwards to Italy,
Spain and Europe generally. All its lodges were placed under
the Grand Lodge of England, and remained so for many years.

I mention these facts and dates in order to let you see that
precisely at the period when Freemasonry was thus extending
abroad, the Infidelity, which had been introduced by Bayle
and openly advocated by Voltaire, was being disseminated
largely amongst the corrupt nobility of France and of Europe
generally. It was, as we have already seen, a period of universal
licence in morals with the great in every country, and the
members of the Grand Lodge in England were generally men
of easy virtue whose example was agreeable to Continental
libertines.

Voltaire found that the Masonry to which he had been
affiliated in London was a capital means of diffusing his
doctrines among the courtiers, the men of letters and the public
of France. It was like himself, the incarnation of hypocrisy
and lying. It came recommended by an appearance of
philanthropy and of religion. Ashmole gave it the open Bible,

47

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

together with the square and compass. It called the world to
witness that it believed in God, "the great Architect of the
Universe." It had "an open eye," which may be taken for
God's all-seeing providence, or for the impossibility of a sworn
Mason escaping his fate if he revealed the secrets of the craft
or failed to obey the orders he was selected to carry out. It
made members known to each other, just as did the ancient
craft, in every country, and professed to take charge of the
orphans and widows of deceased brethren who could not
provide for them. But, in its secret conclaves and in its ascend-
ing degrees, it had means to tell the victim whom it could count
upon, that the "Architect" meant a circle, a nothing; 1 that
the open Bible was the universe; and that the square and
compass was simply the fitness of things — the means to make
all men "fraternal, equal and free" in some impossible Utopia
it promised but never gave. In the recesses of its lodges, the
political conspirator found the men and the means to arrive at
his ends in security. Those who ambitioned office found there
the means of advancement. The old spirit breathed into the
fraternity by Socinus, and nourished so well by the heretical
libertines of the England and Germany of the seventeenth
century, and perfected by the Infidels of the eighteenth, was
master in all its lodges. Banquets, ribald songs and jests,
revelling in sin, constituted from the beginning a leading
feature in its life. Lodges became the secure home for the roue,
the spendthrift, the man of broken fortunes, the Infidel, and
the depraved of the upper classes. Such attractive centres of
sin, therefore, spread over Europe with great rapidity. They
were encouraged not only by Voltaire, but by his whole host of
Atheistic writers, philosophers, encyclopedists, revolutionists,
and rakes. The scoundrels of Europe found congenial employ-
ment in them; and before twenty years elapsed from their
first introduction the lodges were a power in Europe, formid-
able by the union which subsisted between them all, and by
the wealth, social position, and unscrapulousness of those who
formed their brotherhood. The principles fashionable — and
indeed alone tolerated — in them all, before long, were the
principles of Voltaire and of his school. This led in time to
the Union and "Illuminism" of Freemasonry.

1 See section xxi. "Freemasonry with Ourselves", pp. 142-154.

48

V

THE UNION AND "ILLUMINISM"
OF FREEMASONRY

WITH the aid of Voltaire, and of his party, Freemasonry
rapidly spread amongst the higher classes of France and
wherever else in Europe the influence of the French Infidels
extended. It soon after obtained immense power of union
and propagandism. In France and everywhere else it had
an English, a Scotch, and a local obedience. These had
separate constitutions and officers, even separate grades,
but all were identical in essence and in aim. A brother
in one was a brother in all. However, it seemed to the leaders
that more unity was needed, and aided by the adhesion of
the Duke of Chartres, subsequently better known as the
Duke of Orleans, the infamous Philippe-Egalite, who was
Grand Master of the Scotch Masonic Body in France, the
French Masons in the English obedience desiring independence
of the Mother Lodge of England, separated and elected
him the first Grand Master of the since celebrated Grand
Orient of France. Two years after this, the execrable "Andro-
gyne" lodges for women, called "Lodges of Adoption" were
established, and had as Grand Mistress over them all the
Duchess of Bourbon, sister of Egalite. The Infidels, by extend-
ing these lodges for women, obtained an immense amount of
influence, which they otherwise never could attain. They
thus invaded the domestic circle of the Court of France and
of every Court in Europe. Thus, too, the royal edicts, the
decrees of Clement XII and Benedict XIV against Free-
masonry, and the efforts of conscientious officers, were rend-
ered completely inoperative. After the death of Voltaire, the
extension of Freemasonry became alarming; but no State
effort could then stop its progress. It daily grew more powerful
and more corrupt. It began already to extend its influence
into every department of state. Promotion in the army, in the
navy, in the public service, in the law, and even to the fat
benefices "in commendam" of the Church, became impossible

49

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

without its aid 1 ; and at this precise juncture, when the
political fortunes of France were, for many reasons, growing
desperate, two events occurred to make the already general
and corrupt Freemasonry still more formidable. These were
the advent of the Illuminism of Saint Martin in France,
and that of Adam Weishaupt in Germany, and the increased
corruption introduced principally by means of women-Free-
masons.

A Portuguese Jew, named Martinez Pasqualis, was the
first to introduce Illuminism into the Lodge of Lyons, and his

1 Before the celebrated "Convent" of Wilhelmsbad there was a thorough
understanding between the Freemasons of the various Catholic countries
of Continental Europe. This was manifested in the horrible intrigues
which led to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, Spain,
Portugal, Germany, and Naples; and which finally compelled Clement
XIV to dissolve the great body by ecclesiastical authority. No doubt
the Jesuits had very potent enemies in the Jansenists, the Gallicans, and
in others whose party spirit and jealousy were stronger than their sense
of the real good of religion. But without the unscrupulous intrigues of the
Infidels of Voltaire's school banded into a compact active league by the
newly-developed Freemasonry, the influence of the sects of Christians
hostile to the Order could never effect an effacement so complete and
so general. Anglican lodges, we must remember, appeared in Spain and
Portugal as soon as in France. One was opened in Gibraltar in 1726,
and one in Madrid in 1727. This latter broke with the mother lodge
of London in 1779, and founded lodges in Barcelona, Cadiz, Vallidolid,
and other cities. There were several lodges at work in Lisbon as early
as 1735. The Duke of Choiseul, a Freemason, with the aid of the abomin-
able de Pompadour, the harlot of the still more abominable Louis XV,
succeeded in driving the Jesuits from France. He then set about influencing
his brother Masons, the Count De Aranda, Prime Minister of Charles lit
of Spain, and the infamous Carvalho-Pombal, the alter ego of the weak
King of Portugal, to do the same work in the Catholic States of their
respective sovereigns. The Marquis de LAngle, a French Freemason
Atheist, and friend of Choiseul, thus writes of De Aranda — "He is the only
man of which Spain can be proud of at this moment. He is the sole Spaniard
of our days whom posterity will place on its tablets. It is he whom it will
love to place on the front of all its temples, and whose name it will engrave
on its escutcheon together with the names of Luther, of Calvin, of Mahomet,
of William Penn, and of Jesus Christ! It is he who desired to sell the
wardrobe of the saints, the property of virgins, and to convert the cross,
the chandeliers, the patens, &c, into bridges and inns and main roads."
We cannot be surprised at what De Aranda attempted after this testimony.
He conspired with Choiseul to forge a letter as if from the General of
the Jesuits, Ricci, which purported to prove that the King's mother was
an adulteress, and that the King had no claim to the Spanish throne.
Secretly, therefore, an order was obtained from the weak Monarch, and
on a given day and hour the Jesuits in all parts of the Spanish dominions
were dragged from their homes, placed on board ships, and cast on the
shores of the Pontifical States in a condition of utter destitution. A calumny
as atrocious and unfounded enabled Pombal to inflict a worse fate on
the Jesuits of Portugal and its dependencies.

50

The Union and "Illuminism" of Freemasonry

system was afterwards perfected in wickedness by Saint
Martin, from whom French Illuminism took its name.
Illuminism meant the extreme extent of immorality, Atheism,
anarchy, levelling, and bloodshed, to which the principles of
Masonry could be carried. It meant a universal conspiracy
against the Church and established order. It constituted a
degree of advancement for all the lodges, and powerfully aided
to make them the centres of revolutionary intrigue and of
political manipulation which they soon became in the hands
of men at once sunk in Atheism and moral corruption.

An idea of these lodges may be obtained from a descrip-
tion given of that of Ermanonville, by M. Le Marquis de
Lefroi, in Dictionnaire des Erreurs Societies, quoted by Deschamps,
vol. ii, page 93.

"It is known," he says, "that the Chateau de Ermanon-
ville belonging to the Sieur Girardin, about ten leagues from
Paris, was a famous haunt of Illuminism. It is known that
there, near the tomb of Jean-Jacques, under the pretext of
bringing men back to the age of nature, reigned the most
horrible dissoluteness of morals. Nothing can equal the turpi-
tude of morals which reigns amongst that horde of Ermanon-
ville. Every woman admitted to the mysteries became common
to the brothers, and was delivered up to the chance or to the
choice of these true Adamites'." Barruel in his Memoires
sur le Jacobinisme, vol. iv. p. 334, says "that M. Leseure, the
father of the hero of La Vendee, having been affiliated to a
lodge of this kind, and having, in obedience to the promptings
of conscience, abandoned it, was soon after poisoned." He
himself declared to the Marquis de Montron that he fell a
victim to "that infamous horde of the Illuminati."

The Illuminism of Saint Martin was simply an advance in
the intensity of immorality, Atheism, secrecy, and terror, which
already reigned in the lodges of France. It planned a deeper
means of revolution and destruction. It became in its hidden
depths a lair in which the Atheists of the period could mature
their plans for the overthrow of the existing order of things to
their own best advantage. It gave itself very captivating
names. Its members were "Knights of Beneficence," "Good
Templars," "Knights of St. John," &c. They numbered,
however, amongst them, the most active, daring, and unscru-
pulous members of Masonry. They set themselves at work

51

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

to dominate over and to control the entire body. They had
no system, any more than any other sort of Masons, to give
the world instead of that which they determined to pull
down. The state of nature, goods and the sexes in common,
no God, and instead of God a hatred for everything sustaining
the idea of God, formed about the sum total of the happiness
which they desired to see reign in a world where people
should be reduced to a level resembling that of wild cattle
in the American prairies. This was the Illumination they
destined for humanity; yet such was the infatuation inspired
by their immoral and strange doctrines that nobles, princes,
and monarchs of the period, including Frederick II of Prussia
and the silly Joseph II of Austria, admitted to a part of their
secrets, were the tools and the dupes, and even the accomplices,
of these infamous conspirators.

52

VI

THE ILLUMINISM OF ADAM WEISHAUPT

BUT the Illuminism of Lyons was destined soon to have a
world-wide and ineradicable hold on the Masonry of the
world by means of an adept far more able than Saint Martin
or any of his associates. This was Adam Weishaupt, a
Professor of Canon Law in the University of Munich. I
shall detain you a while to consider this remarkable individual
who, more than any of the Atheists that have arisen in
Masonry, has been the cause of the success of its agencies in
controlling the fate of the world since his day. Had Weishaupt
not lived, Masonry may have ceased to be a power after the
reaction consequent on the first French Revolution, He gave
it a form and character which caused it to outlive that re-
action, to energize it to the present day, and which will cause
it to advance until its final conflict with Christianity must
determine whether Christ or Satan shall reign on this earth
to the end.

Voltaire's will to do God and man injury was as strong
as that of Weishaupt. His disciples, D'Alembert, Diderot,
Damilaville, Condorcet, and the rest, were as fully determined
as he was, to eradicate Christianity. But they desired in its
stead a system with only a mitigated antipathy for monarchy,
and which might have tolerated for a long time such kings as
Frederick of Prussia, and such Empresses as Catherine of
Russia. But the hatred for God and all form of worship, and
the determination to found a universal republic on the lines
of Communism, was on the part of Weishaupt a settled senti-
ment. Possessed of a rare power of organization, an education
in law which made him a pre-eminent teacher in its highest
faculty, an extended knowledge of men and things, a command
over himself, a repute for external morality, and finally, a
position calculated to win able disciples, Weishaupt employed
for fifty years after the death of Voltaire, his whole life and
energies in the one work of perfecting secret associations to
accomplish by deep deceit, and by force when that should be
practical, the ruin of the existing order of religion, civilization,

53

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

and government, in order to plant in its stead his own system
of Atheism and Socialism.

He found contemporary Masonry well adapted for his
ends. His object was to extend it as far as possible as a means
of seducing men away from Christianity. He well knew that
Masonry and the Church were in mortal conflict, and that the
moment a man became a Mason, he, that instant, became
excommunicated; he lost the grace of God; he passed into a
state of hostility to the Church; he ceased to approach the
Sacraments; he was constituted in a state of rebellion; he
forfeited his liberty to unknown superiors; he took a dreadful
oath — perhaps many — not to reveal the secrets then, or at any
after time, to be committed to his keeping; and finally, he
placed himself amongst men, all of whom were in his own
position, and in whose society it was possible and easy for the
astute disciples of Weishaupt to lead him farther on the road
to ruin.

Weishaupt's view, then, was first to entice men into
Masonry — into the lowest degree. A great gain for evil was
thus at once obtained. But a man, though in Masonry, may
not be willing to become an Atheist and a Socialist, for some
time at least. He may have in his heart a profound conviction
that a God existed, and some hope left of returning to that
God at or before his death. He may have entered Masonry for
purposes of ambition, for motives of vanity, from mere light-
ness of character. He may continue his prayers, and refuse, if
a Catholic, to give up the Mother of God and some practice of
piety loved by him from his youth. But Masonry was a capital
system to wean a man gradually away from all ihese things.
It did not at once deny the existence of God, nor at once
attack the Christian Dispensation. It commenced by giving
the Christian idea of God, an easy, and, under semblance of
respect, an almost imperceptible shake. It swore by the name
of God in all its oaths. It called him, however, not a Creator,
only an architect — the great Architect of the universe. It care-
fully avoided all mention of Christ, of the Adorable Trinity, of
the Unity of the Faith, or of any faith. It protested a respect for
the convictions of every man, for the idolatrous Parsee, for the
Mahommedan, for the Heretic, the Schismatic, the Catholic.
By-and-by, it gave, in higher degrees, a ruder shock to the
belief in the Deity and a gradual inducement to favour

54

The Illuminism of Adam Weishaupt

Naturalism. This it did gradually, imperceptibly, but effec-
tually. Now, to a man who meditated the vast designs of social
and religious destruction contemplated by Weishaupt,
Masonry, especially the Masonry of his period, was the most
effective means that could be conceived. In its midst, there-
fore, he planted his disciples, well versed in his system. These
consisted of three classes, each class having subdivisions, and
all of which were high degrees of Masonry. The first class of
Illuminati, was that of preparation. It consisted of two
degrees, namely, the degree of Novice and that of Minerval.
The Minervals formed the great body of the order, and were
under the direction of certain chiefs, who themselves were
subjected to other agencies invisible to those instructed by
themselves. Weishaupt instructed the teachers of the Miner-
vals to propose each year to their scholars some interesting
questions, to cause them to write themes calculated to spread
impiety amongst the people, such as burlesques on the Psalms,
pasquinades on the Prophets, and caricatures of personages
of the Old Testament after the manner of Voltaire and his
school. It is surprising with what exactitude these Minervals
follow out the instructions of Weishaupt to this day. At this
moment, in London, under the eyes of the Lord Chancellor,
pamphlets, with hideous woodcuts, ridiculing David, "the man
after God's own heart," are weekly published. One of these,
which was handed to me in a public place, had a woodcut
representing the "meek Monarch of Judea," with a head just
severed from a human body in one hand, and the sword that
did the deed in the other. Another represented him amidst
a set of ridiculous figures dancing. From this we can easily
judge that illuminated Masonry is at work somewhere even
in London, and that the Masonry in high quarters is blind to
its excesses, exactly as happened in France a few years before
the French Revolution. Now these Minervals, if they mani-
fested what the German Masons called "religionary" inclina-
tions, might indeed receive the first three Masonic degrees,
but they were not to be further promoted in Illuminism. They
were relegated to the rank and file of Masonry, who were of
use in many ways for the movement, but they were never to
be trusted with the real secret. The teacher, without seeming
to do so, was ordered to encourage, but not to applaud
publicly, such blasphemies as the Minervals might make use

55

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

of in their essays. They were to be led on, seemingly by them-
selves, in the ways of irreligion, immorality, and Atheism,
until ripe for further promotion in evil progress. Finally, in
the advanced grades of Illuminated Major and Minor, and in
those of Scotch Knight and Epopte or Priest they were told
the whole secret of the Order as follows, in a discourse by the
initiator.

"Remember," he said, "that from the first invitations
which we have given you, in order to attract you to us, we
have commenced by telling you that in the projects of our
Order there did not enter any designs against religion. You
remember that such an assurance was again given to you
when you were admitted into the ranks of our novices, and
that it was repeated when you entered into our Minerval
Academy. Remember also how much from the first grades
we have spoken to you of morality and virtue, but at the
same time how much the studies which we prescribed for
you and the instructions which we gave you rendered both
morality and virtue independent of all religion; how much
we have been at pains to make you understand, while
making to you the eulogy of religion, that it was not any-
thing else than those mysteries, and that worship degenerated
in the hands of the priest. You remember with what art,
with what simulated respect, we have spoken to you of
Christ and of his Gospel; but in the grades of greater Illumi-
nism, of Scotch Knight, and of Epopte or Priest, how we
have known to form from Christ's Gospel that of our reason,
and from its morality that of nature, and from its religion
that of nature, and from religion, reason, morality, and
nature, to make the religion, and the morality of the rights
of man, of equality, and of liberty. Remember that while
insinuating to you the different parts of this system, we have
caused them to bud forth from yourselves as if your own
opinions. We have placed you on the way; you have replied
to our questions very much more than we did to yours. When
we demanded of you, for example, whether the religions of
peoples responded to the end for which men adopted them;
if the religion of Christ, pure and simple, was that which the
different Sects professed to-day, we know well enough what
to hold. But it was necessary to knew to what point we had
succeeded to cause our sentiments to germinate in you. We

56

The Illuminism of Adam Weishaupt

have had very many prejudices to overcome in you, before
being able to persuade you that the pretended religion of
Christ was nothing else than the work of priests, of imposture,
and of tyranny. If it be so with that religion so much pro-
claimed and admired, what are we to think of other religions?
Understand, then, that they have all the same fictions for their
origin, that they are all equally founded on lying, error,
chimera, and imposture. Behold our secret!

"The turns and counter-turns which it was necessary to
make; the eulogies which it was necessary to give to the
pretended secret schools; the fable of the Freemasons being in
possession of the veritable doctrine; and our Illuminism to-day,
the sole inheritor of these mysteries, will no longer astonish
you at this moment. If, in order to destroy all Christianity,
all religion, we have pretended to have the sole true religion,
remember that the end justifies the means, and that the wise
ought to take all the means to do good, which the wicked
take to do evil. Those which we have taken to deliver you,
those which we take to deliver one day the human race from
all religion, are nothing else than a pious fraud which we
reserve to unveil some day in the grade of Magus or Philoso-
pher Illuminated." — Segur: Le Secret de la Franc-Maconnerie,
p. 49.

The above extract will serve to show you what manner
of man Weishaupt was, and the quality of the teaching he
invented. His organization — for the perfection of which he
deeply studied the constitution of the then suppressed Society
of Jesus — contemplated placing the thread of the whole con-
spiracy, destined to be controlled by the Illuminati, in the
hands of one man, advised by a small council. The Illuminati
were to be in Masonry and of Masonry, so as to move amongst
its members secretly. They were so trained that they could
obtain the mastery in every form of secret society, and thus
render it subservient to their own Chief. Their fidelity to
him was made perfect by the most severe and complex system
of espionage. The Chief himself was kept safe by his position,
his long training, and by his council. It thus happened that
no matter to what office or position the Illuminati attained,
they had to become subservient to the general aims of the
Order. Weishaupt, after being deprived of his professorship
in Bavaria, found an asylum with the Prince of Coburg

57

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

Gotha, where he remained in honour, affluence and security,
until his death in 1830. He continued all his life the Chief
of the Illuminati, and this fact may account, in large measure,
for the fidelity with which the Illuminati of the Revolution,
the Directory, Consulate, the Empire, the Restoration, and
the Revolution of 1 830, invariably carried out his programme
of perpetual conspiracy for the ends he had in view. It may
also account for the strange vitality of the spirit of the Illu-
minati in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, and of its
continuance through the 'Illuminated 1 ' reigns of Nubius and
Palmerston, the successors of Weishaupt to our own day. This
we shall see further on; but, meanwhile, we shall glance at
the first step of Weishaupt to rule over Masonry through his
disciples. This was by calling together the famous "General
Council" of Freemasonry, known as the Convent of Wilhelms-
bad.

58

VII

THE CONVENT OF WILHELMSBAD

FROM its rise Freemasonry appears as a kind of dark parody
of the Church of Christ. The names taken by its dignitaries,
the form of its hierarchy, the designations affected by its
lodges and "obediences," the language of its rituals, all seem
to be a kind of aping after the usages of Christianity. When
Saint Martin wished to spread his Illuminism in France, he
managed to have a meeting of deputy Masons from all the
lodges in that country. This was designated the "Convent
of the Gauls"; and Lyons, the place of its meeting, was
called "The Holy City." Weishaupt had more extended
views. He meant to reach all humanity by means of Masonry,
and looked for a "Convent" far more general than that of
Lyons. When, therefore, he had matured his plans for
impregnating the Masonry of the world with his infernal
system, he began to cast about for means to call that Convent.
The Illuminism of Saint Martin was in full sympathy with
him, but it could not effect his purpose. He wanted a kind
of General Council of the Masonry extended at the time
throughout the earth to be called together; and he hoped
that, by adroitly manipulating the representatives whom he
knew would be sent to it by the lodges of every nationality
of Masons, his own Illuminism might be adopted as a kind
of high, arch, or hidden, Masonry, throughout its entire
extent. He succeeded in his design, and in 1781, under
the official convocation of the Duke of Brunswick, acting
as Supreme Grand Master, deputies from every country
where Freemasonry existed were summoned to meet at
Wilhelmsbad in council. They came from every portion
of the British Empire; from the newly formed United States
of America; from all the Nations of Continental Europe,
every one of which, at that period, had lodges; from the
territories of the Grand Turk, and from the Indian and
Colonial possessions of France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland.
The principal and most numerous representatives were, how-
ever, from Germany and France. Through the skilful agency

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

of the notorious Baron Knigge, and another still more astute
adept of his, named Dittfort, Weishaupt completely controlled
this Council. He further caused measures to be there con-
certed which in a few years led to the French Revolution, and
afterwards handed Germany over to the French revolutionary
Generals acting under the Girondins, the Jacobins, and the
Directory. I would wish, if time permitted, to enter at length
into the proofs of this fact. It will suffice, however, for my
present purpose, to state that more than sufficient evidence of
it was found by the Bavarian Government, which had, some
five years later, to suppress the Illuminati, and that one of the
members of the convent, the Count de Virene, was struck with
such horror at the depravity of the body that he abandoned
Illuminism and became a fervent Catholic. He said to a
friend: — "I will not tell you the secrets which I bring, but I can
say that a conspiracy is laid so secret and so deep that it will be
very difficult for monarchy and religion not to succomb to it."
It may be also of use to remark that many of the leaders of
the French Revolution, and notably most of those who lived
through it, and profited by it, were deputy Masons sent from
various lodges in France to the Convent of Wilhelmsbad.

60

VIII

CABALISTIC MASONRY OR MASONIC
SPIRITISM

BEFORE proceeding further with the history of Freemasonry,
I shall stay a moment to consider a very remarkable feature
in its strange composition, without which it scarcely ever
appears. The world was never without wizards, witches,
necromancers, jugglers, and those who really had, or through
imposture, pretended to have, intercourse with demons.
Masonry in its various ramifications is the great continuator
of this feature of a past which we had thought departed for
ever. Spirit-rapping, table-turning, medium-imposture, etc.,
distinguish its adepts in Protestant countries and in Catholic
ones. We have almost incredible stories of the intercourse
with the devil and his angels, which men like the Carbonari
of Italy maintain. However, from the very beginning Free-
masonry has had a kind of peculiar dark mysticism connected
with it. It loves to revel in such mysteries as the secret con-
claves that the Jews used to practise in the countries in which
they were persecuted, and which were common among
those unclean heretics, the Bulgarians, the Gnostics, the
Albigenses, and the Waldenses. The excesses alleged against
the Templars were also accompanied by secret signs and
symbols which Masonry adopted. But whatever may have
been the extent of this mysticism in Masonry before, a spurious
kind of spiritism became part of its very essence since the
advent of the celebrated Cagliostro, who travelled all over
Europe under the instructions of Weishaupt, and founded
more lodges than did any individual Freemason then or since.
The real name of this arch-imposter was Balsamo. He
was an inveterate sorcerer, and in his peregrinations in the
East, picked up from every source the secrets of alchemy,
astrology, jugglery, legerdemain, and occult science of every
kind about which he could get any information. Like the
Masonry to which he became affiliated at an early period, he
was an adept at acting and speaking a lie. He suited Weis-
haupt, who, though knowing him to be an imposter, never-

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

theless employed for him the diffusion of Illuminism. Accom-
panied by his no less celebrated wife, Lorenza, he appeared
in Venice as the Marquis Pelligrini, and subsequently
traversed Italy, Germany, Spain, England, the Netherlands,
and Russia. In the latter country he amassed, at the Court
of Catherine II, an immense fortune. In France, assisted by
the efforts of the Illuminati, he was received as a kind of
demigod, and called the divine Cagliostro. He established
new lodges in all parts of the country. At Bordeaux he
remained eleven months for this purpose. In Paris he estab-
lished lodges for women of a peculiarly cabalistic and impure
kind, with inner departments horribly mysterious. At the
reception of members he used rites and ceremonies exactly
resembling the absurd practices of spirit mediums, who see
and speak to spirits, etc., and introduced all that nonsense
with which we are made now familiar by his modern fol-
lowers. He claimed the power of conferring immortal youth,
health, and beauty, and what he called moral and physical
regeneration, by the aid of drugs and Illuminated Masonry.
He was the father and the founder of the existing rite of
Misraim — the Egyptian rite in Masonry. The scoundrel
became involved in the celebrated case of the "Diamond
Necklace," and was sent to the Bastille, from which he
managed to pass to England, where, in 1787, he undertook to
foretell the destruction of the Bastille, and of the Monarchy
of France, the Revolution, and — but here he miscalculated —
the advent of a Prince who would abolish Lettres de Cachet,
convoke the States General, and establish the worship of
Reason. All these measures were resolved on at Wilhelmsbad,
and Cagliostro of course knew that well. His only miscalcula-
tion was regarding the Prince Grand Master. The Revolution
went on a little too far for the wretched Egalite, who ended
his treason to his house by losing his head at the guillotine.
As to Cagliostro, he made his way to Rome, where the
Inquisition put an end to his exploits on detecting his attempts
at Illuminism. His secret powers could not deliver him from
prison. He died there miserably, in 1795, after attempting to
strangle a poor Capuchin whom he asked for as a confessor,
and in whose habit he had hoped to escape. This impostor
is of course made a martyr to the Inquisition accordingly.
Masonry does much to disown Cagliostro; but with a strange

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Cabalistic Masonry or Masonic Spiritism

inconsistency it keeps the Egyptian rite founded by him, and
clings to mysticism of the debased kind he introduced. It is
wonderful how extremes thus meet, — how men who make
it a sign of intellectual strength to deny the existence of the
God that made them bow down stupidly and superstitiously
before devils, real or imaginary. Necromancy is a charac-
teristic of Antichrist, of whom we read, "that he will show
great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if that were possible,
even the elect." He will be when, he comes both a Cromwell
and a Cagliostro.

63

IX

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

I MAY here remark that the conspiracy of the Illuminati,
and of Freemasonry generally, was far from being a secret
to many of the Courts of Europe. But, then, just as at the
present moment, it had friends, female as well as male,
in every court. These baulked the wholesome attempts
of some rulers to stay its deadly intrigues against princes,
governments, and all order, as well as against its one grand
enemy, the Church of Jesus Christ. The Court of Bavaria
found out, as I have said, but only by an accident, a part of
the plans of the Illuminati, and gave the alarm; but, strange
to say, that alarm was unheeded by the other Courts of
Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant. A Revolution was
expected, but, as now, each Court hoped to stave off the
worst consequences from itself, and to profit by the ruin of
its neighbours. The voice of the Holy Father was raised
against Freemasonry again and again. Clement VIII, Bene-
dict XIV, and other Pontiffs, condemned it. The Agents and
Ministers of the Holy See, gave private advices and made
urgent appeals to have the evil stopped while yet the powers
of Europe could do so. These were all baffled, and the Court
of the Grand Monarch and every Court of Continental
Europe slept in the torpor of a living death, until wakened to a
true sense of danger at a period far too late to remedy the
disasters which irreligion, vice, stupidity, and recklessness
hastened. The lodges of the Illuminati in France meanwhile
carried on the conspiracy. They had amassed and expended
immense sums in deluging the country with immoral and
Atheistic literature.

Mirabeau, in his Monarchic Prassienne (vol. 6, page 67),
published before the Revolution, thus speaks of these sums: —

"Masonry in general, and especially the branch of the Templars,
produced annually immense sums by means of the cost of receptions
and contributions of every kind. A part of the total was employed in
the expenses of the order, but another part, much more considerable,
went into a general fund, of which no one, except the first amongst the
brethren, knew the destination," Cagliostro, when questioned before the

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The French Revolution

Holy Roman Inquisition, "confessed that he led his sumptuous existence
thanks to the funds furnished him by the Illuminati. He also stated that
he had a commission from Weishaupt to prepare the French Lodges
to receive his direction." — See Deschamps, v., p. 129.

Discontent was thus sown broadcast amongst every class
of the population. Masonic Lodges multiplied, inspired by
the instructed emissaries of the remorseless Weishaupt; and
the direct work of Freemasonry in subsequent events is
manifest not only in the detailed prophecy of Cagliostro,
founded on what he knew was decided upon; but is still more
clearly evidenced by a second convent, held by the French
Illuminati, where everything was arranged for the Revolution.
The men prominent in this conclave were the men subse-
quentiy most active in every scene that followed. Mirabeau,
Lafayette, Fouche, Talleyrand, Danton, Murat, Robespierre,
Cambaceres, and in fact every foremost name in the subse-
quent convulsions of the country were not only Illuminati,
but foremost amongst the Illuminati. 1 Some disappeared
under their own guillotine; others outlived the doom of their
fellows. Constantly, the men of the whole conspiracy had
understandings and relations with each other. Weishaupt, at
the safe distance of Coburg-Gotha, gave them his willing aid
and that of the German Freemasons. This concert enabled
them to float on every billow which the troubled sea of the
Revolution caused to swell; and if they did not succeed in
making France and all Europe a social ruin, such as that
contemplated at Wilhelmsbad, it was from want of power, not
from want of will. Position and wealth made many of them

1 It is commonly believed that the encyclopaedists and philosophers
were the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne
at the time of the Revolution. But, apart from the facts that these writers
were to a man Freemasons, and the most daring and plotting of Free-
masons, we have abundant authority to prove that other Freemasons
were everywhere even more practically engaged in the same work. Louis
Blanc, who will be accepted as an authority on this point, thus writes: —
"It is of consequence to introduce the reader into the mine which at that
time was being dug beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very
much more profound and active than the encyclopaedists: an association
composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound
together by symbolic bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve
the secret of their interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific
proofs while occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but otherwise
practised beneficence and looked upon themselves as equals though
divided in three classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Free-
masonry consists in that. Now, on the eve of the French Revolution,
Freemasonry was found to have received an immense development.

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

desire to conserve what the Revolution threw into their hands.
But they remained under all changes of fortune Freemasons,
as they and their successors are to this day. Perhaps, under
the influence of oaths, of secret terror, and of the Sect, they
dare not remain long otherwise. One or two individuals may
drop aside; but some fatality or necessity keeps the leaders
Illuminati always. They as a whole body remain ever the
same, and recoil before political adversity, only to gather
more strength for a future attack upon religion and order
still wider and more fatal than the one which preceded it.
They are not at any time one whit less determined to plunge
the world into the anarchy and bloodshed they created at the
French Revolution, than they were in 1789. On this point
let one of themselves speak: — (Extracts from "Proofs of a
Conspiracy," by John Robison, A.M., Professor of Natural Philo-
sophy and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh — The Third
Edition, corrected, 1789.)

"I have been able to trace these attempts, made, through
a course of fifty years, under the specious pretext of enlight-
ening the world by the torch of philosophy, and of dispelling
the clouds of civil and religious superstition which keep the
nations of Europe in darkness and slavery. I have observed
these doctrines gradually diffusing and mixing with all the
different systems of Free Masonry; till, at last, AN ASSOCIA-
TION HAS BEEN FORMED for the express purpose of ROOTING
OUT ALL THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OVERTURNING
ALL THE EXISTING GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE. I have Seen

Spread throughout the whole of Europe, it seconded the meditative genius
of Germany, agitated France silently, and presented everywhere the image
of a society founded on principles contrary to those of civil society." Mgr.
Segur writes on this: — "See to what a point the reign of Jesus Christ
was menaced at the hour the Revolution broke out. It was not France
alone that it agitated, but the whole of Europe. What do I say? The
world was in the power of Masonry. All the lodges of the world came in
1781 to Wilhelmsbad by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa and America;
from the most distant coasts discovered by navigators, they came, zealous
apostles of Masonry .... They all returned penetrated with the Illumin-
ism of Weishaupt, that is Atheism, and animated with the poison of
incredulity with which the orators of the Convent had inspired them.
Europe and the Masonic world were then in arms against Catholicism.
Therefore, when the signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible
especially in France, in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations which
they wished to separate from the Pope and cast into schism, until the
time came when they would completely de-Christianize them. This
accounts well for the captivities of Pius VI and Pius VII."

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The French Revolution

this Association exerting itself zealously and systematically,
till it has become almost irresistible: and I have seen that
the most active leaders in the French Revolution were
members of this Association, and conducted their first move-
ments according to its principles, and by means of its instruct-
ions and assistance, formally requested and obtained: lastly,
I have seen that this Association still exists, still works in
secret, and that not only several appearances among our-
selves show that its emissaries are endeavouring to propagate
their detestable doctrines among us, but that the Association
has Lodges in Britain corresponding with the mother Lodge
at Munich ever since 1784.

"If all this were a matter of mere curiosity, and suscep-
tible of no good use, it would have been better to have kept
it to myself, than to disturb my neighbours with the know-
ledge of a state of things which they cannot amend. But if
it shall appear that the minds of my countrymen are misled
in the very same manner as were those of our continental
neighbours — if I can show that the reasonings which make a
very strong impression on some persons in this country are
the same which actually produced the dangerous association
in Germany; and that they had this unhappy influence solely
because they were thought to be sincere, and the expressions
of the sentiments of the speakers. If I can show that this
was all a cheat, and that the Leaders of this Association
disbelieved every word that they uttered, and every doctrine
that they taught; and that their real intention was to abolish
all religion, overturn every government, and make the world
a general plunder and a wreck ... I cannot but think that
such information will make my countrymen hesitate a little,
and receive with caution, and even distrust, addresses and
instructions which flatter our self-conceit." — (pp. 11-13.)

These words of Robison show, that as early as 1797,
the connection between Freemasonry and the French Revolu-
tion was well understood. Since then Louis Blanc, and other
Masonic writers, have gloried in the fact. "Our end," said
the celebrated Alta Vendita, to which I shall have to refer
presently, "is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution."
In fact, what Freemasonry did in France, it now labours,
with greater caution, to effect on some future day throughout

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

the entire world. It then submitted, with perfect docility,
to a great military leader, who arose out of its own work
and principles. Such another leader will finally direct its
last efforts against God and man.
That leader will be Antichrist.

68

X

NAPOLEON AND FREEMASONRY

THE leader who arose out of the first French Revolution,
and whose military and diplomatic fame is still fresh in the
recollection of many of the present generation — that leader
was Napoleon Bonaparte. In the days of his greatest prosperity,
nothing was so distasteful to him as to be reminded of his
Jacobin past. He then wished to pose as another Charlemagne,
or Rudolph of Hapsburg. He wished to be considered the
friend of religion, and of the Catholic religion in particular.
He did something for the restoration of the Church in France,
but it was as little as he could help. It, perhaps, prevented
a more wholesome and complete reaction in favour of the
true religious aspirations of the population. It was done
grudgingly, parsimoniously, and meanly. And when it had
been done, Napoleon did all he could to undo its benefits.
He soon became the persecutor — the heartless, cruel, ungrate-
ful persecutor of the Pontiff, and an opponent to the best
interests of religion in France, and in every country which
had the misfortune to fall under his sway. The reason for
all this was, that Napoleon had commenced his career as a
Freemason, and a Freemason he remained in spirit and in
effect to the end of his life. It is known that he owed his
first elevation to the Jacobins, and that his earliest patron
was Robespierre. His first campaign in Italy was character-
ized by the utmost brutality which could gratify Masonic
hatred for the Church. He suppressed the abodes of the
consecrated servants of God, sacked churches, cathedrals,
and sanctuaries, and reduced the Pope to the direst extremi-
ties. His language was the reflex of his acts and of his heart.
His letters breathe everywhere the spirit of advanced Free-
masonry, gloating over the wounds it had been able to inflict
upon the Spouse of Christ. Yet this adventurer has, with
great adroitness, been able to pass with many, and especially
in Ireland, as a good Catholic. Because he was the enemy
of England, or rather that England led by the counsels of
Pitt and Burke, constituted herself the implacable enemy

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

of the Revolution of which he was the incarnation and
continuation, many opposed to England for political reasons,
regard Bonaparte as a kind of hero. No one can doubt the
military genius of the man, nor indeed his great general
ability; but he was in all his acts what Freemasonry made
him. He was mean, selfish, tyrannical, cruel. He was reckless
of blood. He could tolerate or use the Church while that
suited his policy. But he had from the beginning to the very
end of his career that thorough indifference to her welfare,
and want of belief in her doctrines, which an early and
life-long connection with the Illuminati inspired.

Father Deschamps writes of him: "Napoleon Bonaparte
was in effect an advanced Freemason, and his reign has been
the most flourishing epoch of Freemasonry. During the reign
of terror the Grand Orient ceased its activity. The moment
Napoleon seized power the lodges were opened in every
place."

I have said that the revolutionary rulers in France were
all Illuminati — that is Freemasons of the most pronounced
type — whose ultimate aim was the destruction of every exist-
ing religion and form of secular government, in order to
found an atheistic, social republic, which would extend
throughout the world and embrace all mankind. Freemasonry
welcomes, as we have seen, the Mahommedan, the Indian,
the Chinese, and the Buddhist, as well as the Christian and
the Jew. It designs to conquer all, as a means of bringing
all into the one level of Atheism and Communism. When,
therefore, its Directory, in their desire to get rid of Napoleon,
planned the expedition to Egypt and Asia, they meant the
realization of a part of this programme, as well as the removal
of a troublesome rival. A universal monarchy is, in their
idea, the most efficacious means for arriving at a universal
republic. Once obtained, the dagger with which they removed
Gustavus III of Sweden, or the guillotine by which they rid
France of Louis XVI, can at any moment remove Caesar and
call in Brutus. They are not the men to recoil before deeds
of blood for the accomplishment of their purposes.

Now Napoleon, who was, as Father Deschamps informs
us, a member of the lodge of the Templars, the extreme
Illuminated lodge of Lyons, and had given proof of his
fidelity to Masonry in Italy, was the very man to extend the

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Napoleon and Freemasonry

rule of Republicanism throughout Asia. He appeared in
Egypt with the same professions of hypocritical respect for
the Koran, the Prophet, and Mahommedanism, as he after-
wards made when it suited his policy for Catholicism. His
address to the people of Egypt will prove this. It ran as
follows, with true Masonic hypocrisy: —

"Cadis, Chieks, Imans, tell the people that we are the
friends of true Mussulmen; that we respect more than the
Mamelukes do, God, His Prophet, and the Alkoran. Is it not
we who have destroyed the Pope, who wished that war should
be made against the Mussulman? Is it not we who have
destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen
thought that God willed them to make war upon the Mussul-
man? Is it not we who have been, in all ages the friends of
the Grand Seigneur — may God fulfil his desires — and the
enemy of his enemies. God is God, and Mahomet is his
Prophet! Fear nothing above all for the religion of the
Prophet, which I love."

The cool hypocrisy of this address is manifested by a
proclamation he made on that occasion to his own soldiers.
The same proclamation also shows the value we may place on
his protestations of attachment to, and respect for, the usages
of Christianity. The following is a translation of it: —

"Soldiers! the peoples with whom we are about to live
are Mahommedan. The first article of their faith is this:
'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.'
Do not contradict them. Act with them as you have acted
with the Jews and with the Italians. Have the same respect
for their Muftis and their Imans, as you have had for Rabbis
and Bishops. Have for the ceremonies prescribed by the
Alkoran, for the Mosques, the same tolerance you had for
Convents, for Synagogues, and for the religion of Moses and
of Jesus Christ."

We read in the correspondence of Napoleon I, published
by order of Napoleon III (vol. v., pp. 185, 191, 241), what he
thought of this proclamation at the very end of his career: —

"After all, it was not impossible that circumstances
might have brought me to embrace Islam," he said at St.
Helena. "Could it be thought that the Empire of the East,
and perhaps the subjection of the whole of Asia, was not
worth a turban and pantaloons, for it was reduced to so much

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

solely. We would lose only our breeches and our hats. I
say that the army, disposed as it was, would have lent itself
to that project undoubtedly, and it saw in it nothing but a
subject for laughter and pleasantry. Meanwhile, you see the
consequences. I took Europe by a back stroke. The old
civilization was beaten down, and who then thought to
disturb the destinies of our France and the regeneration of the
world? Who had dared to undertake it? Who could have
accomplished it?"

Neither prosperity nor adversity changed Napoleon.
He was a sceptic to the end. He said at St. Helena to
Las Cases:

"Everything proclaims the existence of a God — that is
not to be doubted — but all our religions are evidently the
children of men.

"Why do these religions cry down one another, combat
one another? Why has that been in all ages, and all places?
It is because men are always men. It is because the Priests
have always insinuated, slipped in lies and fraud everywhere.

"Nevertheless," he continued, "from the moment that I
had the power, I had been eager to re-establish religion. I
used it as the base and the root. It was in my eyes the support
of good morality, of true principles, of good manners.

"I am assuredly far from being an Atheist; but I cannot
believe all that they teach me in spite of my reason, under
penalty of being deceitful and hypocritical.

"To say whence I come, what I am, where I go, is above
ray ideas. And nevertheless all that is, I am the watch which
exists and does not know itself.

"No doubt," he commented, "but my spirit of mere
doubt was, in my quality of Emperor, a benefit for the people
Otherwise how could I equally favour sects so contrary, if I
had been dominated over by one alone? How could I pre-
serve the independence of my thoughts and of my movements
under the suggestions of a confessor who could govern me by
means of the fear of hell.

"What an empire could not a wicked man, the most
stupid of men, under that title of confessor, exercise over
those who govern nations ?

"I was so penetrated with these truths that I preserved
myself well to act in such a manner, that, in as far as it lay

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Napoleon and Freemasonry

in me, I would educate my son in the same religious lines in
which I found myself."

Two months later the ex-Emperor said that from the age
of thirteen he had lost all religious faith.

Thiers (Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire, iv. p. 14),
says that when Napoleon intended to proclaim himself
Emperor, he wished to give the Masons a pledge of his
principles, and that he did this by killing the Duke dEnghien.
He said, "They wish to destroy the Revolution in attacking it
in my person. I will defend it, for I am the Revolution. I,
myself — I, myself. They will so consider it from this day
forward, for they will know of what we are capable."

A less brave but still more accomplished relative of his,
Napoleon III, in his Idees Napoleoniennes, says: —

"The Revolution dying, but not vanquished, left to
Napoleon the accomplishments of its last designs. Enlighten
the nations it would have said to him. Place upon solid bases
the principal result of our efforts. Execute in extent that
which I have done in depth. Be for Europe what I have
been for France. That grand mission Napoleon accomplished
even to the end."

When Napoleon obtained power, it was we know prin-
cipally by means of the Illuminated Freemason Talleyrand. 1
By him and his confederates of the Illuminati, he was recalled

1 Alexander Dumas in his Memoires de Garibaldi, first series, p. 34, tells
us: —

"Illuminism and Freemasonry, these two great enemies of royalty,
and the adopted device of both of which was L. P. D., lilia pedibus destrue,
had a grand part in the French Revolution.

"Napoleon took Masonry under his protection. Joseph Napoleon
was Grand Master of the Order, Joachim Murat second Master adjoint.
The Empress Josephine being at Strasbourg, in 1805, presided over the
fete for the adoption of the lodge of True Chevaliers of Paris. At the same
time Eugene de Beauharnais was Venerable of the lodge of St. Eugene
in Paris. Having come to Italy with the title of Viceroy, the Grand Orient
of Milan named him Master and Sovereign Commander of the Supreme
Council of the thirty-second grade, that is to say, accorded him the greatest
honour which could be given him according to the Statutes of the Order.
Bemadotte was a Mason. His son Oscar was Grand Master of the Swedish
lodge. In the different lodges of Paris were successively initiated, Alexander,
Duke of Wurtemburg; the Prince Bernard of Saxe- Weimar, even the
Persian Ambassador, Askeri Khan. The President of the Senate, Count
de Lacipede, presided over the Grand Orient of France, which had for
officers of honour the Generals Kellerman, Messina, and Soult. Princes,
Ministers, Marshals, Officers, Magistrates, all the men, in fine, remarkable

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

from. Egypt and placed in the way of its attainment. His
brothers were — every one of them — deep in the secrets of the
Sect. Its supreme hidden directory saw that a reaction had
set in, which if not averted, would speedily lead to the return
of the exiled Bourbons, and to the disgorgement of ill-gotten
goods on the part of the revolutionists. As a lesser evil,
therefore, and as a means of forwarding the unification of
Europe which they had planned, by his conquests, they placed
supreme power in the hands of Bonaparte, and urged him on
in his career, watching, at the same time, closely, their own
opportunities for the development of the deadly designs of
the Sect. Then, they obtained the first places in his Empire
for themselves. They put as much mischief into the measures
of relief given to conscience as they could. They established
a fatal supremacy for secularism in the matter of education.
They brought dissension between the Pope and the Emperor.
They caused the seond confiscation of the States of the
Church. They caused and continued to the end, the imprison-
ment of Pius VII. They were at the bottom of every attack
made by Napoleon while Emperor upon the rights of the
Church, the freedom and independence of the Supreme
Pontiff, and the well-being of religion.

But the chief mistake of Napoleon was the encouragement
he gave to Freemasonry. It served his purpose admirably
for a while, that is so long as he served the present and ultimate

for their glory or considerable by their position, ambitioned to be made
Masons. The women even wished to have their lodges into which entered
Mesdames de Vaudemont, de Carignan, de Gerardin, de Narbonne
and many other ladies."

Frere Clavel, in his picturesque history of Freemasonry, says that,
"Of all these high personages the Prince Cambaceres was the one who
most occupied himself with Masonry. He made it his duty to rally to Mason-
ry all the men in France who were influential by their official position,
by their talent, or by their fortune. The personal services which he rendered
to many of the brethren, the eclat which he caused to be given to the lodges
in bringing to their sittings by his example and invitations all those illustri-
ous amongst the military and judicial professions and others, contributed
powerfully to the fusion of parlies and to the consolidation of the imperial
throne. In effect under his brilliant and active administration the lodges
multiplied ad infinitum. They were composed of the elect of French
society. They became a point of re-union for the partisans of the existing
and or passed regimes. They celebrated in them the feasts of the Emperor.
They read in them the bulletins of his victories before they were made
public by the press, and able men organized the enthusiasm which gradually
took hold of all minds."

74

Napoleon and Freemasonry

views of the conspiracy; for a conspiracy Masonry ever
was and ever will be. Even if Cambaceres, Talleyrand,
Fouche, and the old leaders of the Illuminati, whom he had
taken into his confidence and richly rewarded, should be
satisfied, there was a mass of others whom no reward could
conciliate, and who, filled with the spirit of the Sect, were
sure to be ever on the look out for the means to advance the
designs of Weishaupt and his inner circle. That inner circle
never ceased its action. It held the members of the Sect,
whom it not only permitted but assisted to attain high worldly
honours, completely in its power, and hence in absolute
subjection. For them as well as for the humblest member of
the secret conclave, the poisoned aqua tophona and the dagger
were ready to do the work of certain death should they lack
obedience to those depraved fanatics of one diabolical idea,
who were found worthy to be selected by their fellow con-
spirators to occupy the highest place of infamy and secret
power. These latter scattered secretly amidst the rank and
file of the lodges, hundreds of Argus-eyed, skilled plotters,
who kept the real power of inner or high Masonry in the
hands of its hidden masters. Masonry from this secret van-
tage ground ceaselessly conspired during the Empire. It
assisted the conquest of the victor of Austerlitz and Jena;
and if Deschamps, who quotes from the most reliable sources,
is to be trusted, it actually did more for these victories than
the great military leader himself. Through its instrumentality
the resources of the enemies of Napoleon were never at hand,
the designs of the Austrian and other generals opposed to him
were thwarted, treason was rife in their camps, and informa-
tion fatal to their designs was conveyed to the French com-
mander. Masonry was then on his side, and as now the
secret resources of the Order, its power of hidden influence
and espionage were placed at the disposal of the cause it
served. But when Masonry had reason to fear that Napoleon's
power might be perpetuated; when his alliance with the
Imperial Family of Austria, and above all, when the conse-
quence of that alliance, an heir to his throne, caused danger
to the universal republic it could otherwise assure itself of at
his death; when, too, he began to show a coldness for the sect,
and sought means to prevent it from the propagandism of its
diabolical aims, then it became his enemy, and his end was

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

not far off. 1 Distracting councils prevailed in his cabinet.
His opponents began to get information regarding his move-
ments, which he had obtained previously of theirs. Members
of the sect urged on his mad expedition to Moscow, His
resources were paralyzed; and he was, in one word, sold
by secret, invisible foes into the hands of his enemies. In
Germany, Weishaupt and his party, still living on in dark
intrigue, prepared secretly for his downfall. His generals were
beaten in detail. He was betrayed, hoodwinked, and finally
led to his deposition and ruin. He then received with a
measure, pressed down and overflowing, and shaken together,
the gratitude of the father of lies, incarnate in Freemasonry, in
the Illuminati, and kindred Atheist secret societies. Banished
to Elba he was permitted to return to France only in order
to meet the fate of an outcast and a prisoner upon the rock
of St. Helena, where he died abandoned and persecuted by
the dark Sect which had used, abused, and betrayed him. So
it has continued, as we shall see, to use, to abuse, and to
betray every usurper or despot whom it lures into its toils.

' Deschamps says that it was at this period that the order of the Templars
(for Masonry is divided into any amount of rites which exercise one over
the other a land of influence in proportion to the members of the inner
grades which they contain) was resuscitated in France. It publicly interred
one of its members from the Church of St. Antoine. The funeral oration
of Jacques Molay was publicly pronounced. Napoleon permitted this.
The danger his permission created was foreseen, and M. de Maistre
writes: — A very remarkable phenomenon is that of the resuscitation of
Freemasonry in Prance, so far, that a brother has been interred solemnly
in Paris with all the attributes and ceremonies of the order. The Master who
reigns in France does not leave it to be even suspected that such a thing can
exist in France without his leave. Judging from his known character and
from his ideas upon secret societies, how then can the thing be explained?
Is he the Chief, or dupe, or perhaps the one and the other of a society which
he thinks he knows, and which mocks him." Illustrating these remarks we
have the comments of M. Bagot in his Cades des Franc-Mayans, p. 183: —
"The Imperial Government took advantage of its omnipotence, to which
so many men, so many institutions, yielded so complacently, in order to
dominate over Masonry. The latter became neither afraid nor revolted.
What did it desire in effect? To extend its empire — "It permitted itself
to become subject to despotism in order to become sovereign." This gives
us the whole reason why Masonry first permitted Napoleon to rule, then
to reign, then to conquer, and finally to fall.

76

XI

FREEMASONRY AFTER THE
FALL OF NAPOLEON

THE many intrigues of that very same body of Illuminati
who had planned and executed the Revolution, then created
successively the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire
in France, as they now posed in a new capacity as friends
to the return of Monarchy in Europe generally. This they
did for the purposes of the Freemasons, and in order to keep
the power they wielded so long in their own hands, and
in the hands of their party. Now, I wish you to note, that
Weishaupt, the father of the Illuminati, and the fanatical
and deep director of all its operations, was even then living
in power and security at Coburg-Gotha, and that his wily
confederates were ministers in every court of Europe. Then,
as now, the invincible determination with which they
secreted their quality from the eyes of monarchs as well as
of the general public, enabled them to pose in any character
or capacity without fear of being detected as Freemasons, or
at least as Illuminati. Since the reign of Frederick the Great,
they filled the Court of Berlin. Many minor German Princes
continued to be Freemasons. The Duke of Brunswick was
the central figure in the first Masonic conspiracy, and though,
with the hypocrisy common to the Sect, he issued a declara-
tion highly condemnatory of his fellows, it is generally believed
that he remained to the end attached to the "regeneration
of humanity" in the interests of Atheism. The Court of
Vienna was more or less Masonic since the reign of the
wretched Joseph II. Alexander of Russia was educated by
La Harpe, a Freemason, and at the very period when called
upon to play a principal part in the celebrated "Holy
Alliance," he was under the hidden guidance of others of the
Illuminati. Fessler, an apostate Austrian religious, the
Councillor of Joseph U, after having abjured Christianity,
remained, while professing a respect for religion, its most
determined enemy. He founded what is known as the
Tugendbund, a society by which German Freemasonry put on

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

a certain Christian covering, in order more securely to outlive
the reaction against Atheism, and to de-Christianize the world
again at a better opportunity. The Tugendbund refused to
receive Jews, and devised many other means to deceive
Christians to become substantially Freemasons without in-
curring Church censures or going against ideas then adverse
to the old Freemasonry, which, nevertheless, continued to
exist as satanic as ever under Christian devices.

In France, the Illuminati of the schools of Wilhelmsbad
and Lyons continued their machinations without much
change of front, though they covered themselves with that
impenetrable secrecy which the sect has found so convenient
for disarming public suspicion while pursuing its aims. Pos-
sessing means of deceiving the outside world, and capable of
using every kind of hypocrisy and ruse, the Freemasons of
both France and Germany plotted at this period with more
secure secrecy and success than ever. There is nothing which
Freemasonry dreads more than light. It is the one thing it
cannot stand. Therefore, it has always taken care to provide
itself with adepts and allies able to disarm public suspicion
in its regard. Should outsiders endeavour to find out its real
character and aims, it takes refuge at once under the sem-
blance of puerility, of harmless amusement, of beneficence,
or even of half-witted simplicity. It is content to be laughed
at, in order not to be found out. But it is for all its puerility
the same dangerous foe to Christianity, law, legitimacy, and
order, which it proved itself to be before and during the first
French Revolution, and which it will continue to be until the
world has universal reason to know the depth, the malignity,
and the extent of its remorseless designs. 1

1 At the Council of Verona, held by the European sovereigns in 1822,
to guard their thrones and peoples from the revolutionary excesses which
threatened Spain, Naples, and Piedmont, the Count Haugwitz, Minister
of the King of Prussia, who then accompanied his master, made the
following speech: —

"Arrived at the end of my career, I believe it to be my duty to cast a
glance upon the secret societies whose power menaces humanity to-day
more than ever. Their history is so bound up with that of my life that 1
cannot refrain from publishing it once more and from giving some details
regarding it.

"My natural disposition, and my education, having excited in me
so great a desire for information that I could not content myself with
ordinary knowledge, I wished to penetrate into the very essence of things.
But shadow follows light, thus an insatiable curiosity develops itself in
proportion to the efforts which one makes to penetrate further into the

78

Freemasonry after the Fall of Napoleon

At the period of the reaction against Bonaparte it seems

to have taken long and wise counsel. When Talleyrand found

that Weishaupt and the inner Masonry no longer approved of

Napoleon's autocracy, he managed very adroitly that the

Emperor should grow cold with him. He was thus free to

take adverse measures against his master, and to prepare

himself for the coming change. The whole following of

Bonaparte recruited from the Illuminati were ready to betray

sanctuary of science. These two sentiments impelled me to enter into the
society of Freemasons.

"It is well known that the first step which one makes in the order is
little calculated to satisfy the mind. That is precisely the danger to be
dreaded for the inflammable imagination of youth. Scarcely had I attained
my majority, when, not only did I find myself at the head of Masonry, but
what is more, I occupied a distinguished place in the chapter of high grades.
Before I had the power of knowing myself, before I could comprehend the
situation in which I had rashly engaged myself, I found myself charged
with the superior direction of the Masonic reunions of a part of Prussia,
of Poland, and of Russia. Masonry was, at that time, divided into two parts,
in its secret labour. The first place in its emblems, the explanation of the
philosopher's stone: Deism and non-Atheism was the religion of these
Sectaries. The central seat of their labours was at Berlin, under the direction
of the Doctor Zumdorf. It was not the same with the other part of which
the Duke of Brunswick was the apparent chief. In open conflict between
themselves, the two parties gave each other the hand in order to obtain
the dominion of the world, to conquer thrones, to serve themselves with
Kings as an order, such was their aim. It would be superfluous to explain
to you in what manner, in my ardent curiosity, I came to know the secrets
of the one party and of the other. The truth is, the secret of the two Sects
is no longer a mystery for me. That secret is revolting.

"It was in the year 1777, that I became charged with the direction
of one part of the Prussian lodges, three or four years before the Convent of
Wilhelmsbad and the invasion of the lodges by Illuminism. My action
extended even over the brothers dispersed throughout Poland and Russia.
If I did not myself see it, I could not give myself even a plausible explanation
of the carelessness with which Governments have been able to shut their
eyes to such a disorder, a veritable state within a State. Not only were the
chiefs in constant correspondence, and employed particular cyphers, but
even they reciprocally sent emissaries one to another. To exercise a dominat-
ing influence over thrones, such was our aim, as it had been of the Knight
Templars.

T thus acquired the firm conviction that the drama commenced
in 1788 and 1789, the French Revolution, the regicide with all its horrors,
not only was then resolved upon, but was even the result of these associa-
tions and oaths, &c.

"Of all my contemporaries of that epoch there is not one left. My
first care was to communicate to William III all my discoveries. We came
to the conclusion that all the Masonic associations, from the most humble
even to the very highest degrees, could not do otherwise than employ
religious sentiments m order to execute plans the most criminal, and make
use of the first in order to cover the second. This conviction, which His
Highness Prince William held in common with me, caused me to take the
firm resolution of renouncing Masonry."

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

him. They could compass the fall of the tyrant, but the
difficulty for them was to find one suitable to put in his place.
It was decreed in their highest council that whosoever should
come upon the throne of France, should be as far removed as
possible from being a friend to Catholicism or to any principle
sustaining true religion. They therefore determined that,
if at all possible, no member of the ancient House should
reign; and as soon as the allied sovereigns who were for
the most part non-Catholic, had crushed Napoleon, these
French Masons demanded the Protestant and Masonic King
of Holland for King in France. This failing, they contrived
by Masonic arts to obtain the first places in the Provisional
Government which succeeded Napoleon. They endeavoured
to make the most of the inevitable, and to rule the incoming
Louis XVIII in the interests of their sect and to the detriment
of the Church and of Christianity.

Notwithstanding the fact that they had shown open
hostility to himself and to his house, Louis XVIII, strange to
say, favoured the Illuminati. Talleyrand was made minister,
and the other advanced Freemasons of the Empire — Sieyes,
Cambaceres, Fouche, and the rest — obtained place and power.
These men at once applied themselves to subvert the senti-
ment of reaction in favour of the monarchy and of religion.
Soon, Louis XVIII gave the world the sad spectacle of a
man prepared at their bidding to cut his own throat. He
dissolved a Parliament of ultra loyalists because they were
too loyal to him. The Freemasons took care that his next
Parliament should be full of its own creatures. They also
wrung from the King, under the plea of freedom of the press,
permission to deluge the country anew with the infidel and
immoral publications of Voltaire and his confederates, and
with newspapers and periodicals, which proved disastrous to
his house, to royalty, and to Christianity, in France. These
led before long to the attempt upon the life of the Duke of
Berry, to the revolution against Charles X, to the elevation
of the son of the Grand Master, Egalite, as Constitutional
King, and to all the revolutionary results that have since
distracted and disgraced unfortunate France. But much as
Freemasonry effected in that country, it was not there but in
peaceful Italy that its illuminated machinations produced the
worst and most wide-spread fruits of death.

80

XII

KINDRED SECRET SOCIETIES IN EUROPE

WE HAVE seen that the use made of Freemasonry by the
Atheists of the last century was a very elastic one. As it
came from England it had all the qualities required by the
remorseless revolutionists, who so eagerly and so ably em-
ployed it for their purposes. Its hypocritical professions
of Theism, of acceptation of the Bible, and of beneficence;
its terrible oaths of secrecy; its grotesque and absurd cere-
monial, to which any meaning from the most silly to the
deepest and darkest could be given; its ascending degrees,
each one demanding additional secrets, to be kept not only
from outsiders, but from the lower degrees; the death penalty
for indiscretion or disobedience; the system of mystery
capable of any extension; the hidden hierarchy; in a word, all
its qualities could be improved and elaborated at will by the
Infidels of the Continent who had made British Masonry their
own. Soon the strict subjection of all subordinate lodges to
whatever Grand Orient or Mother Lodge they spring from,
and on which they depend, and, above all, the complete
understanding between the directors of the Masonic "powers",
that is of the different rites into which the Masonry is divided,
placed its entire government in a select ruling body, directed
in turn by a small committee of the ablest conspirators,
elected by and known to that body alone. The whole rank
and file of Masonry receive their orders at present from this
inner body, who are unknown to the mere masons of the
lodges. The members of the committee deputed by the
lodges are able to testify to the fact of the authenticity of the
orders. Those who rule from the hidden recesses take care
that these deputies shall be men worthy of confidence. A
lodge, therefore, has its masters, it officers, and management;
but its orders come through a channel that appears to be
nothing, whereas it is everything in the movement of the
whole mass. Thus it happens that the master of a lodge or
the grand master of a province, or of a nation, whose high-
sounding titles may make him seem to outsiders to be every-

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

thing, is in reality often nothing at all in the actual govern-
ment of Masonry. The real power rests with the hidden
committee of direction, and confidential agents, who move
almost invisibly amongst the officers and members of the
lodges. These hidden agents of iniquity are vigilant spies,
secret "wire pullers", who are seldom promoted to any office,
but content themselves with the real power which they are
selected to use with dexterity and care.

It was through this system that Weishaupt obtained the
adoption of illuminated Masonry at the convent of Wilhelms-
bad. Through the machinations of Knigge he obtained from
the delegates there assembled the approval of his plan that
the ultimate end of Freemasonry and all secret plotting should
be — 1°, Pantheism — a form of Atheism which flatters Masonic
pride. 2°, Communism of goods, women, and general
concerns. 3°, That the means to arrive at these ends should
be the destruction of the Church, and of all forms of Christian-
ity; the obliteration of every kind of supernatural belief;
and, finally, the removal of all existing human governments
to make way for a universal republic in which the Utopian
ideas of complete liberty from existing social, moral, and
religious restraint, absolute equality, and social fraternity,
should reign. When these ends should be attained, but not
till then, the secret work of the Atheistic Freemasons should
cease.

At the convent of Wilhelmsbad, Weishaupt had the
means taken to carry out this determination. There Masonry
became one organized Atheistic mass, while being still
permitted to assume many fantastic shapes. The Knights
Rosicrucian, the Templars, the Knights of Beneficence, the
Brothers of Amity were strictly united to Illuminated
Masonry. All could be reached through Masonry itself.
All were placed under the same government. Masonry was
made more elastic than ever. When, as in the cases of Ireland
and Poland, an enslaved nationality should be found, which
the supreme Invisible Directory wished to revolutionize, and
when, at the same time, the existing respect for the words of
the Vicar of Christ made Masonry hateful, a secret political
society was ordered to be formed on the plan of Freemasonry,
but with some other name. It too put on, after the example
of Masonry itself, the semblance of zeal and respect for

82

Kindred Secret Societies in Europe

religion, but it was bound to have horrible oaths, ascending
degrees, centres, the terrible death penalty for indiscretion or
treason, to be, in essence, and in every sense, if not in name,
a society identical with Freemasonry. The supreme direction
of the Revolution was to contrive by sure means to have
adepts high and powerful in its management; and the society
was, even if founded to defend the Catholic religion, thus sure,
sooner or later, to diverge from the Church and to become
hostile to religion and to its ministers. The Atheistic revolu-
tionists of the Continent in the last century learned to perfec-
tion the art to effect this; and hence the ready assistance
which men who were murdering priests in Paris and through-
out France and Italy, gave to the Catholics of Ireland in 1798.
Was it to relieve the Catholics of Ireland from persecution,
while they themselves were to a far more frightful extent
oppressing the Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood,
Catholic religious, and Catholic people, for no other reason
than the profession of the Catholic faith in France and Italy?
By no means. They, at the very time, had already corrupted
Irishmen. Some of these were open Infidels and others were
Jacobite Freemasons of no particular attachment to any form
of Christianity. They shared in Napoleon's indifference to
religion, and were as ready to profess zeal for their Catholic
fellow countrymen, as he and his soldiers were ready to
profess "love" for the Alkoran and the Prophet in Egypt, or
for St. Januarius in Naples. But they and their leaders in
Black Masonry knew that once they could unite even the very
best and truest Catholic men in Ireland into a secret society
on such lines as I have described, they would soon find an
entrance for Atheism into the country. They would not be
wanting in means to win recruits by degrees from the best
intentioned Catholics so bound by oaths, and so subjected to
hidden influences. They were adepts at proselytism, especially
amongst those who gave up liberty and will to unknown
masters. But the agency of the Atheists of France was
carried to work the mischief it intended for Ireland upon
other Catholic lands. It forced its tyranny very soon upon
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and the Rhenish provinces
of Germany. That was bad enough, but it was not all. When
the French revolutionary armies had departed from these
countries, after the fall of Bonaparte, they left a deadly

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

scourge that could not be removed behind them. That was
the system of Atheistic organization of which we have been
speaking, and which was not slow in producing its malignant
fruits.

In Catholic Italy, where the scourge of the Revolution
fell most heavily, the misfortune happened thus: The dis-
content consequent upon the multitude of political parties in
that country gave the secret machinators of the Weishaupt
school a splendid opportunity of again renewing their in-
trigues; while the miserable Government of the Bourbons in
France, in permitting Freemasonry to flourish, afforded its
supreme direction an opportunity to assist them in many
ways. Public opinion in Germany was unripe for any Atheism
unless veiled under the hypocritical pretences of the Tugend-
bund. In Italy, however, though religion was strong amongst
all classes, the division of the country into small principalities
caused the hopes of the revolutionists to be more sanguine
than anywhere else, and the opportunity of dealing a blow
at the temporal power of the Pope under the national pretext
of a united Italy, was too great a temptation for the Supreme
Masonic Directory to resist. Besides, it could not be forgotten
by them, that in making past efforts the power of the Pope
was the principal cause of their many failures. They rightly
judged that the complete destruction of his temporal authority
was essential to Atheism, and the first and most necessary
step to their ultimate views upon all Christianity, and for
the subjugation of the world to their sway. The temporal
power was the stronghold, the rallying point of every legitimate
authority in Europe. With a sure instinct of self-preservation,
the Schismatical Lord of Russia, the Evangelical King of
Prussia, the Protestant Governments of England, Denmark,
and Sweden, as well as the ancient legitimate Catholic
dynasties of Portugal, Austria, Bavaria, and Spain had
determined at the Congress of Vienna on the restoration of
the temporal dominions of the Pope. The Conservatives of
Europe, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Schismatic, felt that
while the States of the Church were preserved intact to the
Head of the Catholic religion, their own rights would remain
unquestioned — that to reach themselves his rights should be
first assailed. The Atheistic conspiracy, guided now by old,
experienced revolutionists, saw also that the conservatism of

84

Kindred Secret Societies in Europe

the world which they had to destroy in order to dominate in
its stead, could not be undermined without first taking away
the foundation of Christian civilization upon which it rested,
and which unquestionably, even for Christian schismatics and
heretics, was the temporal and the spiritual authority of the
Pope. Having no idea of a divine preservation of the Christian
religion, they judged that the destruction of the temporal
power would lead inevitably to the destruction of the spiritual;
and as experience proved that it would be useless to attempt
to destroy both altogether, they then set all their agencies at
work to destroy the temporal power first. They therefore
determined to create and ferment to the utmost extent a poli-
tical discontent amongst the populations of the different states
into which the Italian Peninsula was divided. Now this was
a difficult task in the face of the experience which the Italian
people had gained of the revolutions and constant political
changes brought by the French from the first attempt of the
Republic to the last of the Empire. The Congress of Vienna
restored most of the ancient Italian States as well as the States
of the Church to the legitimate rulers. Peace and prosperity
beyond what had been known for years began to reign in the
Peninsula. The mass of the people were profoundly contented.
They were more Catholic than ever, notwithstanding all that
the revolutionary agents of France did to pervert them. But
there remained a dangerous fraction amidst the population
not at all satisfied with the change which had so much
improved the nation generally. This fraction consisted of those
individuals and their children who benefited by the revolu-
tionary regime. They were the men who made themselves
deputies in Rome, Naples, and elsewhere, and by the aid of
French revolutionary bayonets seized upon Church property
and became enriched by public spoliation. These still re-
mained revolutionary to the core. Then, there was the
interest effected by their party. And finally, there was that
uneasy class, educated by the many cheap universities of the
country in too great number, the sons of advocates and other
professional men, who, tinged with liberalism, easily became
the prey of the designing men who still remained addicted to
the principles and were leagued in the secret organizations of
Weishaupt and his fellow Atheists. Even one of these youths
corrupted and excited to ambition by the adroit manipulation

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

of these emissaries of Satan, still active, though more im-
perceptible than ever, would be sufficient to kindle a flame
amongst his fellows capable of creating a wide discontent.
Aided then by such elements, already at hand for their
purposes, Weishaupt and his hidden Directory determined to
kindle such a flame of Revolution in Italy as, in its effects,
should, before long, do more harm to religion and order than
even the French Revolution had caused in its sanguinary but
brief career. They effected this by the formation, on the
darkest lines of "illuminated" Masonry, of the terrible Sect
of the Carbonari.

86

XIII

THE CARBONARI

IN this sect, the whole of the hitherto recognized principles
of organized Atheism were perfected and intensified. In
it, from the commencement, a cunning hypocrisy was the
means most used as the best calculated to lead away a people
Catholic to the very core. The first of the Carbonari of which
we have any distinct notice appeared at a season when Athe-
ism, directed by Weishaupt, was busy in forming everywhere
secret associations for apparently no purpose other than poli-
tical amelioration. He determined to try upon the peasantry
of Italy the same arts which the French had intended for the
Catholic peasantry of Ireland. The United Irishmen were
banded together to demand amongst other things, Catholic
Emancipation. Never had a people greater reason to rise
against oppression than the Catholics of Ireland of that
period. They were urged on to do so, however, by leaders
who, in many instances, were not Catholic, and who had no
political grievance, and whose aim was the formation in Ire-
land of an independent republic ruled, of course, by them-
selves, on the model of the one which was established then
in France. That seemed to the Catholic the only way to get
out of the heretical domination which had for such a length-
ened period oppressed his country. Now, the Carbonari of
Italy were at first formed for a purpose identical with that of
the United Irishmen. They conspired to bring back their
national independence ruined by the French, the freedom of
their religion, and their rightful Bourbon sovereign. With
them it was made an indispensable obligation that each
member should be not only a Catholic, but a Catholic going
regularly to the Sacraments. They took for their Grand
Master, Jesus Christ our Lord. But, as I have said before, it
is impossible for a secret society having a death penalty for
breach of secret, having ascending degrees, and bound to
blind obedience to hidden masters, to remain any appreciable
length of time without falling under the domination of the
Supreme Directory of organized Atheism. It was so with

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

Carbonarism, which, having started on the purest Catholic and
loyal lines, soon ended in being the very worst kind of secret
society which Infidelity had then formed on the lines of
Masonry. Very soon, Italian adepts in black Masonry invaded
its ranks, the loudest in the protestation of religion and loyalty.
Equally soon, these skilled, experienced, and unscrupulous
veterans in dark intrigue obtained the mastery in its supreme
direction, won over proselytes from fit conspirators, and had
the whole association in their power. It was then easy to find
abundant pretexts to excite the passions of the rank and file, to
kindle hopes from revolution, to create political dissatisfaction,
and to make the whole body of the Sect what it has actually
become. Italian genius soon outstripped the Germans in
astuteness; and as soon, perhaps sooner, than Weishaupt
passed away, the supreme government of all the secret societies
of the world was exercised by the Alta Vendita or highest lodge
of the Italian Carbonari. The Alta Vendita ruled the blackest
Freemasonry of France, Germany, and England; and until
Mazzini wrenched the sceptre of the dark Empire from that
body, it continued with consummate ability to direct the revo-
lutions of Europe. It considered, with that wisdom peculiar
to the children of darkness, that the conspiracy against the
Holy See was the conspiracy in permanence. It employed its
principal intrigues against the State, the surroundings, and
the very person of the Pontiff. It had hopes, by its manipu-
lations, to gain eventually, even the Pope himself, to betray
the Christian cause, and then it well knew the universe would
be placed at its feet. It left unmeasured freedom to the lodges
of Masonry to carry on those revolutions of a political kind,
which worked out the problems of the sect upon France,
Spain, Italy, and other countries. It kept still greater move-
ments to itself. The permanent instruction of this body to its
adepts will give you an idea of its power, its policy, and its
principles.

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PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE
ALTA VENDITA

"EVER since we have established ourselves as a body of
action, and that order has commenced to reign in the bosom
of the most distant lodge, as in that one nearest the centre
of action, there is one thought which has profoundly occupied
the men who aspire to universal regeneration. That is the
thought of the enfranchisement of Italy, from which must
one day come the enfranchisement of the entire world,
the fraternal republic, and the harmony of humanity. That
thought has not yet been seized upon by our brethren beyond
the Alps. They believe that revolutionary Italy can only
conspire in the shade, deal some strokes of the poniard
to sbirri and traitors, and tranquilly undergo the yoke of
events which take place beyond the Alps for Italy, but with-
out Italy. This error has been fatal to us on many occasions.
It is not necessary to combat it with phrases which would be
only to propagate it. It is necessary to kill it by facts. Thus,
amidst the cares which have the privilege of agitating the
minds of the most vigorous of our lodges, there is one which
we ought never to forget.

"The Papacy has at all times exercised a decisive action
upon the affairs of Italy. By the hands, by the voices, by the
pens, by the hearts of its innumerable bishops, priests, monks,
nuns and people in all latitudes, the Papacy finds devoted-
ness without end ready for martyrdom, and that to enthu-
siasm. Everywhere, whenever it pleases to call upon them,
it has friends ready to die or lose all for its cause. This is an
immense leverage which the Popes alone have been able to
appreciate to its full power, and as yet they have used it only
to a certain extent. To-day there is no question of reconsti-
tuting for ourselves that power, the prestige of which is for
the moment weakened. Our final end is that of Voltaire and
of the French Revolution, the destruction for ever of Catho-
licism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing
on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christi-

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anity later on. But to attain more certainly that result, and
not prepare ourselves with gaiety of heart for reverses which
adjourn indefinitely, or compromise for ages, the success of a
good cause, we must not pay attention to those braggarts of
Frenchmen, those cloudy Germans, those melancholy English-
men, all of whom imagine they can kill Catholicism, now
with an impure song, then with an illogical deduction; at
another time, with a sarcasm smuggled in like the cottons of
Great Britain. Catholicism has a life much more tenacious
than that. It has seen the most implacable, the most terrible
adversaries, and it has often had the malignant pleasure of
throwing holy water on the tombs of the most enraged. Let
us permit, then, our brethren of these countries to give them-
selves up to the sterile intemperance of their anti-Catholic
zeal. Let them even mock at our Madonnas and our ap-
parent devotion. With this passport we can conspire at our
ease, and arrive little by little at the end we have in view.

"Now the Papacy has been for seventeen centuries in-
herent to the history of Italy. Italy cannot breathe or move
without the permission of the Supreme Pastor. With him
she has the hundred arms of Briareus, without him she is
condemned to a pitiable impotence. She has nothing but
divisions to foment, hatreds to break out, and hostilities to
manifest themselves from the highest chain of the Alps to the
lowest of the Appenines. We cannot desire such a state of
things. It is necessary, then, to seek a remedy for that situa-
tion. The remedy is found. The Pope, whoever he may be,
will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret
societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer
the two.

"The work which we have undertaken is not the work
of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many
years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies and
the fight continues.

"We do not mean to win the Popes to our cause, to
make them neophytes of our principles, and propagators of
our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream, no matter in
what manner events may turn. Should cardinals or prelates,
for example, enter, willingly or by surprise, in some manner,
into a part of our secrets, it would be by no means a motive
to desire their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation

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would destroy us. Ambition alone would bring them to apos-
tasy from us. The needs of power would force them to
immolate us. That which we ought to demand, that which
we should seek and expect, as the Jews expected the Messiah,
is a Pope according to our wants. Alexander VI, with all his
private crimes, would not suit us, for he never erred in reli-
gious matters. Clement XIV, on the contrary, would suit
us from head to foot. Borgia was a libertine, a true sen-
sualist of the eighteenth century strayed into the fifteenth.
He has been anathematized, notwithstanding his vices, by all
the voices of philosophy and incredulity, and he owes that
anathema to the vigour with which he defended the Church.
Ganganelli gave himself over, bound hand and foot, to the
ministers of the Bourbons, who made him afraid, and to the
incredulous who celebrated his tolerance and Ganganelli is
become a very great Pope. He is almost in the same condi-
tion that it is necessary for us to find another, if that be yet
possible. With that we should march more surely to the
attack upon the Church than with the pamphlets of our
brethren in France, or even with the gold of England. Do you
wish to know the reason? It is because by that we should
have no more need of the vinegar of Hannibal, no more need
of the powder of cannon, no more need even of our arms. We
have the little finger of the successor of St. Peter engaged in
the plot, and that little finger is of more value for our crusade
than all the Innocents, the Urbans, and the St. Bernards of
Christianity.

"We do not doubt that we shall arrive at that supreme
term of all our efforts; but when? but how? The unknown
does not yet manifest itself. Nevertheless, as nothing should
separate us from the plan traced out; as, on the contrary, all
things should tend to it — as if success were to crown the work
scarcely sketched out to-morrow — we wish in this instruction
which must rest a secret for the simple initiated, to give to
those of the Supreme Lodge, councils with which they should
enlighten the universality of the brethren, under the form of
an instruction or memorandum. It is of special importance,
and because of a discretion, the motives of which are trans-
parent, never to permit it to be felt that these counsels are
orders emanating from the Alta Vendita. The clergy is put
too much in peril by it, that one can at the present hour

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permit oneself to play with it, as with one of these small
affairs or of these little princes upon which one need but
blow to cause them to disappear.

"Little can be done with those old cardinals or with
those prelates, whose character is very decided. It is neces-
sary to leave them as we find them, incorrigible, in the school
of Consalvi, and draw from our magazines of popularity or
unpopularity the arms which will render useful or ridiculous
the power in their hands. A word which one can ably invent
and which one has the art to spread amongst certain honour-
able chosen families by whose means it descends into the
cafes and from the cafes into the streets; a word can some-
times kill a man. If a prelate comes to Rome to exercise
some public function from the depths of the provinces, know
presently his character, his antecedents, his qualities, his
defects above all things. If he is in advance, a declared enemy,
an Albani, a Pallotta, a Bernetti, a Delia Genga, a Riverola,
envelope him in all the snares which you can place beneath
his feet; create for him one of those reputations which will
frighten little children and old women; paint him cruel and
sanguinary; recount, regarding him, some traits of cruelty
which can be easily engraved in the minds of people. When
foreign journals shall gather for us these recitals, which they
will embellish in their turn (inevitably because of their respect
for truth), show, or rather cause to be shown, by some respect-
able fool those papers where the names and the excesses
of the personages implicated are related. As France and
England, so Italy will never be wanting in facile pens which
know how to employ themselves in these lies so useful to
the good cause. With a newspaper, the language of which
they do not understand, but in which they will see the name
of their delegate or judge, the people have no need of other
proofs. They are in the infancy of liberalism; they believe in
liberals, as, later on, they will believe in us, not knowing
very well why.

"Crush the enemy whoever he may be; crush the power-
ful by means of lies and calumnies; but especially crush him
in the egg. It is to the youth we must go. It is that which
we must seduce; it is that which we must bring under the
banner of the secret societies. In order to advance by steps,
calculated but sure, in that perilous way, two things are of the

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first necessity. You ought to have the air of being simple as
doves, but you must be prudent as the serpent. Your fathers,
your children, your wives themselves, ought always to be
ignorant of the secret which you carry in your bosoms. If it
pleases you, in order the better to deceive the inquisitorial
eye, to go often to confession, you are as by right authorised
to preserve the most absolute silence regarding these things.
You know that the least revelation, that the slightest indica-
tion escaped from you in the tribunal of penance, or else-
where, can bring on great calamities and that the sentence of
death is already pronounced upon the revealer, whether
voluntary or involuntary.

"Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope in the manner
required, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation
worthy of the reign of which we dream. Leave on one side
old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible,
even to infancy. Never speak in their presence a word
of impiety or impurity. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Never
forget these words of the poet for they will preserve you from
licences which it is absolutely essential to guard against
for the good of the cause. In order to reap profit at the home
of each family, in order to give yourself the right of asylum
at the domestic hearth, you ought to present yourself with
all the appearance of a man grave and moral. Once your
reputation is established in the colleges, in the gymnasiums,
in the universities, and in the seminaries — once that you
shall have captivated the confidence of professors and students,
so act that those who are principally engaged in the ecclesiasti-
cal state should love to seek your conversation. Nourish their
souls with the splendours of ancient Papal Rome. There is
always at the bottom of the Italian heart a regret for Republi-
can Rome. Excite, enkindle those natures so full of warmth
and of patriotic fire. Offer them at first, but always in secret,
inoffensive books, poetry resplendent with national emphasis;
then little by little you will bring your disciples to the degree
of cooking desired. When upon all the points of the ecclesia-
stical state at once, this daily work shall have spread our
ideas as the light, then you will be able to appreciate the
wisdom of the counsel in which we take the initiative.

"Events, which in our opinion, precipitate themselves
too rapidly, go necessarily in a few months' time to bring on

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an intervention of Austria. There are fools who in the light-
ness of their hearts please themselves in casting others into
the midst of perils, and, meanwhile, there are fools who at a
given hour drag on even wise men. The revolution which
they meditate in Italy will only end in misfortunes and per-
secutions. Nothing is ripe, neither the men nor the things,
and nothing shall be for a long time yet; but from these evils
you can easily draw one new chord, and cause it to vibrate
in the hearts of the young clergy. That is the hatred of the
stranger. Cause the German to become ridiculous and odious
even before his foreseen entry. With the idea of the Pontifical
supremacy, mix always the old memories of the wars of the
priesthood and the Empire. Awaken the smouldering pas-
sions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and thus you will
obtain for yourselves the reputation of good Catholics and
pure patriots.

"That reputation will open the way for our doctrines to
pass to the bosoms of the young clergy, and go even to the
depths of convents. In a few years the young clergy will
have, by the force of events, invaded all the functions. They
will govern, administer, and judge. They will form the council
of the Sovereign. They will be called upon to choose the
Pontiff who will reign; and that Pontiff, like the greater part
of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the
Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to
put in circulation. It is a little grain of mustard which we
place in the earth, but the sun of justice will develop it even
to be a great power, and you will see one day what a rich
harvest that little seed will produce.

"In the way which we trace for our brethren there are
found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than
one kind to surmount. They will be overcome by experience
and by perspicacity; but the end is beautiful. What does it
matter to put all the sails to the wind in order to attain it.
You wish to revolutionize Italy? Seek out the Pope of
whom we give the portrait. You wish to establish the reign
of the elect upon the throne of the prostitute of Babylon?
Let the clergy march under your banner in the belief always
that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys. You
wish to cause the last vestige of tyranny and of oppression to
disappear? Lay your nets like Simon Barjona. Lay them

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in the depths of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather
than in the depths of the sea, and if you will precipitate
nothing you will give yourself a draught of fishes more
miraculous than his. The fisher of fishes will become a fisher
of men. You will bring yourselves as friends around the
Apostolic Chair. You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara
and Cope, marching with Cross and banner — a Revolution
which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four
quarters of the world on fire.

"Let each act of your life tend then to discover the
Philosopher's Stone. The alchemists of the middle ages lost
their time and the gold of their dupes in the quest of this
dream. That of the secret societies will be accomplished for
the most simple of reasons, because it is based on the pas-
sions of man. Let us not be discouraged then by a check, a
reverse, or a defeat. Let us prepare our arms in the silence
of the lodges, dress our batteries, flatter all passions the most
evil and the most generous, and all lead us to think that our
plans will succeed one day above even our most improbable
calculations."

This document reveals the whole line of action followed
since by the Italian Revolutionists. It gives also a fair in-
sight into tactics with which other European countries have
been made familiar by Freemasonry generally. But we are
in possession of what appears to me a still more striking
document, written for the benefit of the Piedmontese lodges
of the Carbonari, by one of the Alta Vendita, whose pseudonym
was Piccolo Tigre — Little Tiger. I may here mention that the
custom of taking these fanciful appelations has been common
to the secret societies from the very beginning. Arouet be-
came Voltaire, the notorious Baron Knigge was called Philo,
Baron Dittfort was called Minos, a custom adopted by the
principal chiefs of the dark Atheistic conspiracy then and since.
The first leader or grand chief of the Alta Vendita was a corrupt
Italian nobleman who took the name of Nubius. From such
documents as he, before his death, managed, in revenge for
being sacrificed by the party of Mazzini, as we shall see, to
have communicated to the authorities of Rome; or which
were found by the vigilance of the Roman detective police;
we find that his funds, and the funds for carrying on the
deep and dark conspiracy in which he and his confederates

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were engaged, came chiefly from rich German Jews. Jews,
in fact, from the commencement, played always a prominent
part in the conspiracies of Atheism. They do so still. Piccolo
Tigre, who seems to have been the most active agent of
Nubius, was a Jew. He travelled under the appearance of an
itinerant banker and jeweller. This character of money-
lender or usurer disarmed suspicion regarding himself and
such of his confederates as he had occasion to call upon in
his peregrinations. Of course he had the protection of the
Masonic body everywhere. The most desperate revolutionists
were generally the most desperate scoundrels otherwise. They
were gamblers, spendthrifts, and the very class with which
an usurious Jew would be expected to have money dealings.
Piccolo Tigre thus travelled safely; and brought safely to the
superior lodges of the Carbonari, such instructions as the Alia
Vendita thought proper to give. In the document referred to,
which I shall now read for you, it will be seen how anxious
the Secret Directory were to make use of the common form
of Masonry notwithstanding the contempt they had for the
bons vivants who only learned from the craft how to become
drunkards and liberals. Beyond the Masons, and unknown
to them, though formed generally from them, lay the deadly
secret conclave which, nevertheless, used and directed them
for the ruin of the world and of their own selves. The next
chapter contains a translation of the document, or "instruc-
tions", as it was called, addressed by Piccolo Tigre to the
Piedmontese lodges of the Carbonari.

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XV

LETTER OF PICCOLO TIGRE

"IN the impossibility in which our brothers and friends find
themselves, to say, as yet, their last word, it has been judged
good and useful to propagate the light everywhere, and
to set in motion all that which aspires to move. For this
reason we do not cease to recommend to you, to affiliate
persons of every class to every manner of association, no
matter of what kind, only provided that mystery and secrecy
should be the dominant characteristics. All Italy is covered
with religious confraternities, and with penitents of divers
colours. Do not fear to slip in some of your people into the
very midst of these flocks, led as they are by a stupid devotion.
Let our agents study with care the personnel of these
confraternity men, and they will see that little by little, they
will not be wanting in a harvest. Under a pretext the most
futile, but never political or religious, create by yourselves,
or, better yet, cause to be created by others, associations,
having commerce, industry, music, the fine arts, etc., for
object. 1 Reunite in one place or another — in the sacristies
or chapels even — these tribes of yours as yet ignorant: put
them under the pastoral staff of some virtuous priest, well
known, but credulous and easy to be deceived. Then infiltrate
the poison into those chosen hearts; infiltrate it in little

1 Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the higher
classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in united Italy,
and is meant to result in republican Italy as a prelude to republican Europe,
says "Associate, associate. All is contained in that word. The secret
societies can give an irresistible force to the party who are able to invoke
them. Do not fear to see them divided. The more they are divided the
better it will be. All of them advance to the same end by different paths.
The secret will be often unveiled. So much the better. The secret is neces-
sary to give security to members, but a certain transparency is necessary to
strike fear into those wishing to remain stationary. When a great number of
associates who receive the word of command to scatter an idea abroad and
make it public opinion, can concert even for a moment they will find the
old edifice pierced in all its parts, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least
breath of progress. They will themselves be astonished to see kings, lords,
men of capital, priests, and all those who form the carcass of the old social
edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion. Courage, then, and
perseverance."

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doses, and, as if by chance. Afterwards, upon reflection, you
will yourselves be astonished at your success.

"The essential thing is to isolate a man from his family,
to cause him to lose his morals. He is sufficiently disposed
by the bent of his character to flee from household cares, and
to run after easy pleasures and forbidden joys. He loves the
long conversations of the cafe and the idleness of shows. Lead
him along, sustain him, give him an importance of some kind
or other; discreetly teach him to grow weary of his daily
labours, and by this management, after having separated him
from his wife and from his children, and after having shown
him how painful are all his duties, you will then excite in him
the desire of another existence. Man is a born rebel. Stir up
the desire of rebellion until it becomes a conflagration, but in
such a manner that the conflagration may not break out. This
is a preparation for the grand work that you should com-
mence. When you shall have insinuated into a few souls
disgust for family and for religion (the one nearly always
follows in the wake of the other), let fall some words which
will provoke the desire of being affiliated to the nearest lodge.
That vanity of the citizen or the burgess, to belong to Free-
masonry, is something so common and so universal that it
always makes me wonder at human stupidity. I begin to be
astonished at not seeing the entire world knock at the gates
of all the Venerables, and demand from these gentlemen the
honour to be one of the workmen chosen for the reconstruction
of the temple of Solomon. The prestige of the unknown
exercises upon men a certain kind of power, that they prepare
themselves with trembling for the phantasmagoric trials of the
initiation and of the fraternal banquet.

"To find oneself a member of a lodge, to feel oneself
called upon to guard from wife and children, a secret which
is never confided to you, is for certain natures a pleasure
and an ambition. The lodges, to-day, can well create gour-
mands, they will never bring forth citizens. There is too
much dining amongst right worshipful and right reverend
brethren of all the Ancients. But they form a place of depot,
a kind of stud (breeding ground), a centre through which
it is necessary to pass before coming to us. The lodges form
but a relative evil, an evil tempered by a false philanthropy,
and by songs yet more false as in France. All that is too

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Letter of Piccolo Tigre

pastoral and too gastronomic; but it is an object which it is
necessary to encourage without ceasing. In teaching a man
to raise his glass to his lips you become possessed of his
intelligence and of his liberty, you dispose of him, turn him
round about, and study him. You divine his inclinations,
his affections, and his tendencies; then, when he is ripe for
us, we direct him to the secret society of which Freemasonry
can be no more than the antechamber.

"The Alta Vendita desires that under one pretence or
another, as many princes and wealthy persons as possible
should be introduced into the Masonic lodges. Princes of a
sovereign house, and those who have not the legitimate hope
of being kings by the grace of God, all wish to be kings by
the grace of a Revolution. The Duke of Orleans is a Free-
mason, the Prince of Carignan was one also. There are not
wanting in Italy and elsewhere, those amongst them, who
aspire to the modest-enough honours of the symbolic apron
and trowel. Others of them are disinherited and proscribed.
Flatter all of their number who are ambitious of popularity;
monopolize them for Freemasonry. The Alta Vendita will
afterwards see what it can do to utilize them in the cause of
progress. A prince who has not a kingdom to expect, is a
good fortune for us. There are many of them in that plight.
Make Freemasons of them. The lodge will conduct them to
Carbonarism. A day will come, perhaps, when the Alta
Vendita will deign to affiliate them. While awaiting they will
serve as birdlime for the imbeciles, the intriguing, the bour-
geoisie, and the needy. These poor princes will serve our
ends, while thinking to labour only for their own. They
form a magnificent sign board, and there are always fools
enough to be found who are ready to compromise themselves
in the service of a conspiracy, of which some prince or other
seems to be the ringleader.

"Once that a man, that a prince, that a prince especially,
shall have commenced to grow corrupt, be persuaded that he
will hardly rest upon the declivity. There is little morality
even amongst the most moral of the world, and one goes fast
in the way of that progress. Do not then be dismayed to see
the lodges flourish, while Carbonarism recruits itself with
difficulty. It is upon the lodges that we count to double our
ranks. They form, without knowing it, our preparatory

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novitiate. They discourse without end upon the dangers of
fanaticism, upon the happiness of social equality, and upon
the grand principles of religious liberty. They launch amidst
their feastings thundering anathemas against intolerance and
persecution. This is positively more than we require to make
adepts. A man imbued with these fine things is not very
far from us. There is nothing more required than to enlist
him. The law of social progress is there, and all there. You
need not take the trouble to seek it elsewhere. In the present
circumstances never lift the mask. Content yourselves to
prowl about the Catholic sheepfold, but as good wolves seize
in the passage the first lamb who offers himself in the desired
conditions. The burgess has much of that which is good for
us, the prince still more. For all that, these lambs must not
be permitted to turn themselves into foxes like the infamous
Carignan. The betrayal of the oath is a sentence of death;
and all those princes whether they are weak or cowardly,
ambitious or repentant, betray us, or denounce us. As good
fortune would have it, they know little, in fact not anything,
and they cannot come upon the trace of our true mysteries.
"Upon the occasion of my last journey to France, I saw
with profound satisfaction that our young initiated exhibited
an extreme ardour for the diffusion of Carbonarism; but I
also found that they rather precipitated the movement a little.
As I think, they converted their religious hatred too much
into a political hatred. The conspiracy against the Roman
See should not confound itself with other projects. We are
exposed to see germinate in the bosom of secret societies,
ardent ambitions; and the ambitious, once masters of power,
may abandon us. The route which we follow is not as yet
sufficiently well traced so as to deliver us up to intriguers
and tribunes. It is of absolute necessity to de-Catholicise the
world. And an ambitious man, having arrived at his end,
will guard himself well from seconding us. The Revolution
in the Church is the Revolution en permanence. It is the
necessary overthrowing of thrones and dynasties. Now an
ambitious man cannot really wish these things. We see
higher and farther. Endeavour, therefore, to act for us, and
to strengthen us. Let us not conspire except against Rome.
For that, let us serve ourselves with all kinds of incidents; let
us put to profit every kind of eventuality. Let us be principally

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on our guard against the exaggerations of zeal. A good
hatred, thoroughly cold, thoroughly calculated, thoroughly
profound, is of more worth than all these artificial fires and
all these declamations of the platform. At Paris they cannot
comprehend this, but in London I have seen men who
seized better upon our plan, and who associated themselves
to us with more fruit. Considerable offers have been made
to me. Presently we shall have a printing establishment
at Malta placed at our disposal. We shall then be able with
impunity, with a sure stroke, and under the British flag, to
scatter from one end of Italy to the other, books, pamphlets,
etc., which the Alta Vendita shall judge proper to put in
circulation."

This document was issued in 1822. Since then, the
instructions it gives have been constantly acted upon in the
lodges of Carbonarism, not only in Italy but everywhere
else. "Prowl about the Catholic sheepfold and seize the
first lamb that presents himself in the required conditions."
This, and the order to get into Catholic confraternities, were
as well executed by the infamous Carey under the influence
of "No. 1," as they were by any Italian conspirator and
assassin, under the personal inspiration of Piccolo Tigre.
Carey, the loud-spoken Catholic — the Catholic who had
Freemason or Orange friends able to assist him in the truly
Masonic way of getting members of the craft as Town-
Councillors, or Aldermen, or Members of Parliament — was,
we now know, a true secret-society hypocrite of the genuine
Italian type. He prowled with effect round the Catholic
sheep-fold. He joined "with fruit" the confraternities of the
Church.

Another curious instruction given by the Alta Vendita to
the Carbonari of the lower lodges, is the way to catch a priest
and make the good, simple man, unconsciously aid the
designs of the revolutionary sectaries. In the permanent
instruction of the Alta Vendita, given to all the lodges, you
will recollect the passage I read for you relative to the giving
of bad names to faithful Prelates who may be too knowing or
too good to do the work of the Carbonari against conscience,
God, and the souls of men, "Ably find out the words and
the ways to make them unpopular" is the sum of that advice.
Has it not been attempted amongst ourselves ? But the main

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advice of the permanent instruction is to seduce the clergy.
The ecclesiastic to be deceived is to be led on by patriotic
ardour. He is to be blinded by a constant, though, of course,
false, and fatal popularity. He is to be made believe that his
course, so very pleasant to flesh and blood, is not only the
most patriotic but the best for religion. "A free Church in
a free State," was the cry with which the sectaries pulled
down the altars, banished the religious, seized upon Church
property, robbed the Pope, and despoiled the Propaganda.
There were ecclesiastics so far deceived, at one time, as to be
led away by these cries in Italy, and ecclesiastics have been
deceived, if not by these, at least by cries as false and fatal
elsewhere to our knowledge. The seduction of foremost
ecclesiastics, prelates, and bishops, was the general policy of
the sect at all times, and it remains so everywhere to this day.

The rank and file of the Carbonari had to do with local
priests and local men of influence. These were, if possible,
to be corrupted, unnerved, and seduced. Each Carbonaro
was ordered to try and corrupt a fellow Christian, a man of
family, by means that the devil himself incarnate could not
devise better for the purpose.

At the end of his letter, Piccolo Tigre glances at means
of corruption which he hoped then — and his hopes were soon
realized to the full — to have in operation for the scattering of
Masonic "light" throughout Italy. We have another docu-
ment which will enable us to judge of the nature of this
"light". It is contained in a letter from Vindex to JVubius,
and was meant to cause the ideas of the Alta Vendita to pass
through the lodges. It is found in that convenient form of
questioning which the Sultan propounds to the Sheik-ul-
Islarn when he wants to make war. He puts his reasons in a
set of questions, and the Sheik replies in as many answers.
Then the war is right in the sight of Allah, and so all Islam
go to fight in a war so sanctified. The new Islam does the
same. A skilfully devised set of questions are posed for the
consideration of one member of the Alta Vendita by another,
and the answer which has been well concocted in secret
conclave, is of course either given or implied to be given
by the nature of the case. The horrible quality of the diabolical
measures proposed by Vindex to Nubius in this form for the
desired destruction of the Church, cannot be surpassed. If

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he discountenances assassination, it is not from fear or
loathing of that frightful crime, but simply because it is not
the best policy. He certainly did fall in upon the only blow
that could — if that were possible, which, thank God, it is not
— destroy the Church of God, and place, as he well says,
Catholicism in the tomb. This is a translation of the
document: —

Castellamare, 9th August, 1838.
"The murders of which our people render themselves
culpable now in France, now in Switzerland, and always in
Italy, are for us a shame and a remorse. It is the cradle of
the world, illustrated by the epilogue of Cain and Abel, and
we are too far in progress to content ourselves with such
means. To what purpose does it serve to kill a man? To
strike fear into the timid and to keep audacious hearts far
from us? Our predecessors in Carbonarism did not under-
stand their power. It is not in the blood of an isolated man,
or even of a traitor, that it is necessary to exercise it; it is
upon the masses. Let us not individualize crime. In order
to grow great, even to the proportions of patriotism and of
hatred for the Church, it is necessary to generalize it. A
stroke of the dagger signifies nothing, produces nothing. What
does the world care for a few unknown corpses cast upon the
highway by the vengeance of secret societies ? What matters
it to the world, if the blood of a workman, of an artist, of a
gentleman, or even of a prince, has flown in virtue of a sen-
tence of Mazzini, or certain of his cut-throats playing seriously
at the Holy Vehme? The world has not time to lend an ear
to the last cries of the victim. It passes on and forgets: it is
we, my Nubius, we alone, that can suspend its march.
Catholicism has no more fear of a well- sharpened stiletto
than monarchies have, but these two bases of social order can
fall by corruption. Let us then never cease to corrupt.
Tertullian was right in saying, that the blood of martyrs was
the seed of Christians. Let us, then, not make martyrs, but let
us popularise vice amongst the multitudes. Let us cause them
to draw it in by their five senses; to drink it in; to be saturated
with it; and that land which Aretinus has sown is always disposed
to receive lewd teachings. Make vicious hearts, and you
will have no more Catholics. Keep the priest away from
labour, from the altar, from virtue. Seek adroitly to other-

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wise occupy his thoughts and his hours. Make him lazy,
a gourmand, and a patriot. He will become ambitious,
intriguing, and perverse. You will thus have a thousand
times better accomplished your task, than if you had blunted
the point of your stiletto upon the bonesofsome poor wretches.
I do not wish, nor do you any more, my friend Nubius, to
devote my life to conspiracies, in order to be dragged along
in the old ruts.

"It is corruption en masse that we have undertaken:
the corruption of the people by the clergy, and the corruption
of the clergy by ourselves; the corruption which ought, one
day to enable us to put the Church in her tomb. I have
recently heard one of our friends, laughing in a philosophic
manner at our projects, say to us: 'in order to destroy
Catholicism it is necessary to commence by suppressing
woman.' The words are true in a sense; but since we cannot
suppress woman, let us corrupt her with the Church, corruptio
optimi pessima. The object we have in view is sufficiently
good to tempt men such as we are; let us not separate our-
selves from it for some miserable personal satisfaction of
vengeance. The best poniard with which to strike the Church
is corruption. To work, then, even to the very end."

The horrible programme of impurity here proposed was
at once adopted. It was after all but an attempt more deter-
mined than ever, to spread the immorality of which Voltaire
and his school were the apostles. At the time the Alta Vendita
propounded this infernal plan they were resisting an in-
road upon their authority on the part of Joseph Mazzini,
just then coming into notoriety, who, however, overcame
them.

Mazzini developed and taught, in his grandiloquent style,

as well as practised the doctrine of assassination 1 which

1 The following extracts from the rules of the Carbonari of Italy, "Young
Italy," will give an idea of the spirit and intent of the order as improved
by the warlike and organizing genius of Mazzini: —

Art. I. — The society is formed for the indispensable destruction of
all the Governments of the Peninsula and to form of Italy one sole State
under a Republican Government.

Art. II. — Having experienced the horrible evils of absolute power
and those yet greater of constitutional monarchies, we ought to work to
found a Republic one and indivisible.

Art. XXX. — Those who do not obey the orders of the secret society,
or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission.
The same chastisement for traitors.

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Letter of Piccolo Tigre

formed, we know, a part of the system of all secret societies,
and which the Alta Vendita deprecated because they feared
that it was about to be employed, just then, against the mem-
bers of their own body. Mazzini speaks of having arisen
from his bed one morning fully satisfied as to the lawfulness
of removing whomsoever he might be pleased to consider an
enemy by the dagger, and fully determined to put that
horrible principle into execution. He cherished it as the
simplest means given to an oppressed people to free themselves
from tyrants. But however much he laboured to make his
terrible creed plausible, as being only permissible against
tyrants and traitors, it was readily foreseen how easily it could
be extended, until it became a capital danger for the sectaries
themselves. Human nature could never become so base and
so blinded as not to revolt against a principle so pernicious.
It may last for a season amidst the first pioneers of the Alta
Vendita, amongst the Black-Hand in Spain, amongst the
Nihilists in Russia, amongst the Invincibles in Ireland, amongst
the Trade-Unionists of the Bradlaugh stamp in England, or
amongst the Communists of Paris. It may serve as a means
to hold in terror the unfortunate prince or leader who may

Art. XXXI. — The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence
and shall design one or two affiliated members for its immediate execution.

Art. XXXII. — Whoever shall refuse to execute the sentence shall
be considered a perjurer, and as such shall be killed on the spot.

Art. XXXIII. — If the culpable individual escape he shall be pursued
without intermission in every place, and he ought to be struck by an invisible
hand, even should he take refuge in the bosom of his mother or in the
tabernacles of Christ.

Art. XXXIV. — Every secret tribunal shall be competent not only
to judge the culpable adepts, but also to cause to be put to death every
person whom it shall have stricken with anathema.

Art. XXXIX. — The officers shall carry a dagger of antique form,
the sub-officers and soldiers shall have guns, and bayonets, together with
a poniard a foot long attached to their cincture, and upon which they
will take oath, &c.

A large number of inspectors of police, generals, and statesmen, were
assassinated by order of these tribunals. The lodges assisted in that work.
Eckert says, La Franc-Maconnerie, t. ii., p. 218, 219 — "Mazzini was the head
of that Young Europe and of the warlike power of Freemasonry, and we
find in the Latomia that the minister Nothorub, who had retired from it,
said to M. Vesbugem, even in the national palace in the presence of six
deputies, that Freemasonry at the present time in Belgium had become a
powerful and dangerous arm in the hands of certain men, that the Swiss
insurrection had its resting place in the machinations of the Belgian lodges,
and that Brother Defacqz, Grand Master of these lodges, had undertaken,
in 1844, a voyage to Switzerland, only in order to prepare that agitation."

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

be seduced in youth or manhood to join secret societies from
motives of ambition; and when that ambition was gratified,
might refuse to go the lengths for Socialism which the Alta
Vendita required. But otherwise assassination did not by
experience prove such a sovereign power in the hands of the
Carbonari as Mazzini expected. His more astute associates
soon found out this; and not from any qualms of conscience,
but from a strong sense of its inexpediency for their ends,
they determined to reject it. They found out a more effective,
though a far more infamous, way for attaining the dark
mastery of the world. It was by the assassination not of
bodies but of souls — by deliberate, systematic and persevering
diffusion of immorality.

The Alta Vendita, then, sat down calmly to consider the
best means to accomplish this design. Satan and his fallen
angels could devise no more efficacious methods than they
found out. They resolved to spread impurity by every method
used in the past by demons to tempt men to sin, to make the
practice of sin habitual, and to keep the unhappy victim in
the state of sin to the end. They had, being living men,
means to accomplish this purpose, which devils could not use
without the aid of men. Christian civilization established
upon the ruins of the licentiousness of Paganism had kept
European society pure. Vice, when it did appear, had to
hide its head for shame. Public decency, supported by public
opinion, kept it down. So long as morality existed as a
recognized virtue, the Revolution had no chance of perma-
nent success; and so the men of the Alta Vendita resolved to
bring back the world to a state of brutal licentiousness not
only as bad as that of Paganism, but to a state at which even

1 Nubius, who, in conjunction with the Templars of France, and the
secret friends of the Revolution in England, had caused all the troubles
endured by the Church and the Holy Father during the celebrated Congress
of Rome and during the entire reign of Louis Philippe, and had so ably
planned the revolutions afterwards carried out by Palmerston and Napoleon
III., was written to before his death by one of his fellow-conspirators in
the following strain: — "We have pushed most things to extremes. We have
taken away from the people all the gods of heaven and earth that they had
in homage, We have taken away their religious faith, their monarchical
faith, their virtue, their probity, their family virtue; and, meantime, what
do we hear in the distance but low bellowing; we tremble, for the monster
may devour us. We have little by little deprived the people of all honour-
able sentiment. They will be without pity. The more 1 think on it the more
I am convinced that we must seek delay of payment."

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Letter of Piccolo Tigre

the morality of the Pagans would shudder. To do this they
proceeded with caution. Their first attempt was to cause
vice to lose its conventional horror, and to make it free from
civil punishment. The unfortunate class of human beings
who make a sad trade in sin, were to be taken under the
protection of the law, and to be kept free from disease at the
expense of the State. Houses were to be licensed, inspected,
protected, and given over to their purposes. The dishonour
attached to their infamous condition was, so far as the law
could effect it, to be taken away. That wholesome sense of
danger and fear of disease which averted the criminally
disposed from sin was to disappear. The agents of the Alta
Vendita had instructions to increase the number and the
seductiveness of those unfortunate beings, while the State,
when revolutionized, was to close its eyes to their excesses,
and to connive at their attempts upon the youth of the
country. They were to be planted close to great schools and
universities, and wherever else they could ruin the rising
generation in every country in which the sect should obtain
power.

Then literature was systematically rendered as immoral
as possible, and diffused with a perseverance and labour
worthy of a better cause. Railway stations, newspaper stands,
book shops, and restaurants, were made to teem with infamous
productions, while the same were scattered broadcast to the
people over every land.

The teaching of the Universities and of all the middle
schools of the State, was not only to be rendered Atheistic
and hostile to religion, but was actually framed to demoralize
the unfortunate alumni at a season of life always but too
prone to vice.

Finally, besides the freest licence for blasphemy and
immorality, and the exhibition and diffusion of immoral
pictures, paintings, and statuary, a last attempt was to be
made upon the virtue of young females under the guise of
educating them up to the standard of human progress.

Therefore, middle and high-class schools were, regard-
less of expense, to be provided for female children, who
should be, at any cost, taken far away from the protecting
care of nuns. They were to be taught in schools directed by
lay masters, and always exposed to such influences as would

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

sap, if not destroy, their purity, and, as a sure consequence,
their faith. These schools have since been the order of the
day with Masonry all over the world. "If we cannot suppress
woman let us corrupt her with the Church," said Vindex,
and they have faithfully acted upon this advice.

The terrible society which planned these infernal means
for destroying religion, social order, and the souls of men,
continued its operations for many years. Its "permanent
instruction" became the Gospel of all the secret societies of
Europe. Its agents, like Piccolo Tigre, travelled unceasingly
in every country. Its orders were received, according to the
system of Masonry, by the heads and the rank and file of the
lodges as so many inevitable decrees. But unfortunately for
the world, it permitted too much political action to the
second lines of the great conspiracy. In the latter, ambitious
spirits arose, who, while embracing to the full the doctrines
of Voltaire and the principles of Weishaupt, began to think
that the Alia Vendita halted actual revolution too much. This
state of feeling became general when that high lodge refused
admittance to Mazzini, who wished to become one of the
invisible forty — the number beyond which the supreme
governing body never permitted itself to pass.

The jealousy of Nubius — for jealousy is a quality of
demons not wanting from the highest intelligence in Atheistic
organization to the lowest — prevented his being admitted.
But he was already far too powerful with the rank and file of
the Carbonari to be refused a voice in the supreme manage-
ment. He raised a cry against the old chiefs as being impotent
and needing change. Nubius consequently passed mysteriously
away. M. Cretineau-Joly 1 is clearly of opinion that it was by
poison; and as it was a custom with the unfortunate chief to
betray for his own protection, or for punishment, some lodges
of Carbonari to the Pontifical Government, it is more than
probable that it was by his provision or information that the
same Government came into the possession of the whole
archives of the Alia Vendita, and that the Church and society
have the documents which I have quoted and others still more
valuable to guide them in discovering and defeating the
attempts of organized Atheism.

The Alia Vendita subsequently passed to Paris, and since
1 Opus cit., ii, 23.
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Letter of Piccolo Tigre

it is believed, to Berlin. It was the immediate successor of
the Inner Circle of Weishaupt. It may change in the number
of its adepts and in the places of its meetings, but it always
subsists. There is over it, a recognized Chief like Nubius or
Weishaupt. But in his lifetime this Chief is usually unknown,
at least to the world outside "Illuminated" Masonry. He is
unknown to the rank and file of the common lodges. But
he wields a power which, however, is not, as in the case of
Nubius and Mazzini, always undisputed. Since that time, if
not before it, there have been two parties under its Directory,
each having its own duties, well defined.

109

XVI

THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE WAR
PARTY IN MASONRY

ECKERT 1 shows that at present all secret societies are divided
into two parties — the party of direction and the party of
action or war party. The duty of the intellectual party,
is to plot and to contrive; that of the party of action, is to
combine, recruit, excite to insurrection, and fight. The
members of the war party are always members of the intel-
lectual party, but not vice versa. The war party thus know
what is being plotted. But the other party, concealed as
common Freemasons amongst the simpletons of the lodges,
cover both sections from danger. If the war party succeed,
the peace party go forward and seize upon the offices of state
and the reins of power. Their men go to the hustings, make
speeches that suit, are written up in the press, which, all the
world over, is under Masonic influence. They are cried up
by the adroit managers of mobs. They become the deputies,
the ministers, the Talleyrands, the Fouches, the Gambettas,
the Ferrys; and of course they make the war party generals,
admirals, and officers of the army, the navy, and the police.
If the war party fails, the intellectual party, who close their
lodges during the combat, appear afterwards as partisans, if
possible, of the conquering party, or if they cannot be that,
they silently conspire. They manage to get some friends into
power. They agitate. They, in either case, come to the assis-
tance of the defeated war party. They extenuate the faults,
while condemning the heedless rashness of ill-advised, good-
natured, though too ardent, young men. They cry for mercy.
They move the popular compassion. In time, they free the
culprits, and thus prepare for new commotions.

All Freemasonry has been long thus adapted, to enable
the intellectual party to assist the war party in distress. It

1 La Franc-Maconnerie dans sa veritable signification, par Eckert, avocat a
Dresde, trad, par Gyr (Liege 1854), t. I., p. 287; appendice. See also
Les Societes Revolutionnaires, Introduction de faction des Societes Secretes au xix.
Siecle. Par M. Claudio Jannel, Deschamps, Opus cit. xciii.

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The Intellectual and the War Party in Masonry

must be remembered that every Carbonaro is in reality a
Freemason. He is taught the passes and can manipulate the
members of the craft. Now, at the very threshold of the
admission of a member to Freemasonry, the Master of the
Lodge, the "Venerable", thus solemnly addresses him: —

"Masons," says he, "are obliged to assist each other by
every means, when occasion offers. Freemasons ought not
to mix themselves up in conspiracies; but if you come to know
that a Freemason is engaged in any enterprise of the kind,
and has fallen a victim to his imprudence, you ought to have
compassion upon his misfortune, and the Masonic bond
makes it a duty for you, to use all your influence and the
influence of your friends, in order to diminish the rigour of
punishment in his favour."

From this it will be seen, with what astute care Masonry
prepares its dupes from the very beginning, to subserve the
purposes of the universal Revolution. Under plea of com-
passion for a brother in distress, albeit through his supposed
imprudence, the Mason's duty is to make use not only of all
his own influence, but also "of the influence of his friends,"
to either deliver him altogether from the consequences of
what is called "his misfortune," or "to diminish the rigour of
his punishment.

Masonry, even in its most innocent form, is a criminal
association. It is criminal in its oaths, which are at best rash;
and it is criminal in promising obedience to unknown com-
mands coming from hidden superiors. It always, therefore,
sympathises with crime. It hates punishment of any repres-
sive kind, and does what it can to destroy the death penalty
even for murder. In revolution, its common practice is to
open gaols, and let felons free upon society. When it cannot
do this, it raises on their behalf a mock sympathy. Hence
we have Victor Hugo pleading with every Government in
Europe in favour of revolutionists; we have the French
Republic liberating the Communists; and there is a motion
before the French Parliament to repeal the laws against the
party of dynamite — the Internationalists, whose aim is the
destruction of every species of religion, law, order and pro-
perty, and the establishment of absolute Socialism. With
ourselves, there is not a revolutionary movement created,
that we do not find at the same time an intellectual party

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apparently disconnected with it, often found condemning it
but in reality supporting it indirectly but zealously. The
Odgers and others of the Trades Union, for instance, will
murder and burn; but it is the Bradlaughs and men theorising
in Parliament if they can, or on the platform if they cannot,
who sustain that very party of action. They secretly sustain
what in public they strongly reprobate, and if necessary dis-
own and denounce. This is a point worthy of deep consi-
deration, and shows more than anything else, the ability and
astuteness with which the whole organization has been
planned.

Again, we must remember, that while the heads of the
party of action are well aware of the course being taken by
the intellectual party, it does not follow that the intellectual
party know the movements of the party of action, or even the
individuals, at least so far as the rank and file are concerned.
It therefore can happen in this country, that Freemasons or
others who are in communication only with the Supreme
Council on the Continent, get instructions to pursue one line
of conduct, and that the war party for deep reasons get
instructions to oppose them. This serves, while preventing the
possibility of exposure, to enable the work of the Infidel
Propaganda to be better done. It is the deeply hidden Chief
and his Council that concoct and direct all. They wield a
power with which, as is well known, the diplomacy of every
nation in the world must count. There are men either of
this Council, or in the first line of its service, whom it will
never permit to be molested. Weishaupt, Nubius, Mazzini,
Piccolo Tigre, De Witt, Misley, Garibaldi, Number One,
Hartmann, may have been arrested, banished, etc., but they
never found the prison that could contain them long, nor the
country that would dare deliver them up for crime against
law or even life. It is determined by the Supreme Directory
that at any cost, the men of their first lines shall not suffer;
and from the beginning they have found means to enforce
that determination against all the crowned heads of Europe.
Now the man who succeeded to the Chieftaincy of this
formidable conspiracy when Nubius passed away was none
other than Lord Palmerston.

112

XVII

LORD PALMERSTON

IT is with difficulty that one can believe that Lord Palmerston
knew the veritable secret of Freemasonry, and that for the
greater part of his career he was the real master, the successor
of Nubius, the Grand Patriarch of the Illuminati, and as such,
the Ruler of all the secret societies in the world. As a States-
man, the distinguished nobleman had dealings of a very
close character with Mazzini, Cavour, Napoleon III, Gari-
baldi, Kossuth, and the other leading revolutionary spirits
of Europe in his day, but it was never for a moment suspected
that he went so far as to accept the supreme direction of the
whole dark and complex machinery of organized Atheism,
or sacrificed the welfare of the great country he was supposed
to serve so ably and so well, to the designs of the terrible
secret conclave whose acts and tendencies were so well
known to him. But the mass of evidence collected by Father
Deschamps and others 1 to prove Lord Palmerston's compli-
city with the worst designs of Atheism against Christianity

1 M. Eckert (opus cit.), was a Saxon lawyer of immense erudition, who
devoted his life to unravel the mysteries of secret societies, and who published
several documents of great value upon their action. He has been of opinion
that "the interior order" not only now but always existed and governed
the exterior mass of Masonry, and its cognate and subject secret societies.
He says: — "Masonry being a universal association is governed by one only
chief called a Patriarch. The title of Grand Master of the Order is not the
exclusive privilege of a family or of a nation. Scotland, England, France,
and Germany have in their time had the honour to give the order its
supreme chief. It appears that Lord Palmerston is clothed to-day (Eckert
wrote in Lord Palmerston's time) with the dignity of Patriarch.

"At the side of the Patriarch are found two committees, the one
legislative and the other executive. These committees, composed of
delegates of the Grand Orients (mother national lodges), alone know the
Patriarch, and are alone in relation with him.

"All the revolutions of modern times prove that the order is divided
into two distinct parties — the one pacific, the other warlike.

"The first employs only intellectual means — that is to say, speech
and writing.

"It brings the authorities or the persons whose destruction it has
resolved upon to succumb or to mutual destruction.

"It seeks for the profit of the order all the places in the State, in
the Church (Protestant), and in the Universities; in one word, all the
positions of influence.

1 1 3

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

and monarchy — not even excepting the monarchy of England
— is so weighty, clear, and conclusive, that it is impossible
to refuse it credence. Father Deschamps brings forward in
proof the testimony of Henry Misley, one of the foremost
Revolutionists of the period, when Palmerston reigned over
the secret Islam of the Sects, and other no less important
testimonies. These I would wish, if time permitted, to give
at length. But the whole history, unhappily, of Lord
Palmerston proves them. In 1809, when but 23 years of age,
we find him War Minister in the Cabinet of the Duke of
Portland. He remained in this office until 1828, during the
successive administrations of Mr. Percival, the Earl of
Liverpool, Mr. Canning, Lord Goderick, and the Duke of
Wellington. He left his party — the Conservatives — when the
last-named Premier insisted upon accepting the resignation of
Mr. Huskisson. In 1830, he accepted the position of Foreign
Secretary in the Whig Ministry of Earl Grey. Up to this
period he must have been well informed in the policy of
England. He saw Napoleon in the fulness of youth, and he
saw his fall. He knew and approved of the measures taken
after that event by the advisers of George IV, for the con-
servation of legitimate interests in Europe, and for the pre-

"It seduces the masses and dominates over public opinion by means
of the press and of associations.

"Its Directory bears the name of the Grand Orient and it closes
its lodges (I will say why presently) the moment the warlike division
causes the masses which they have won over to secret societies to descend
into the street.

"At the moment when the pacific division has pushed its works
sufficiently far that a violent attack has chances of success, then, at a
time not far distant, when mens' passions are inflamed; when authority
is sufficiently weakened; or when the important posts are occupied by
traitors, the warlike division will receive orders to employ all its activity.

"The Directory of the belligerent division is called the Firmament.

"From the moment they come to armed attacks, and that the belli-
gerent division has taken the reins, the lodges of the pacific division are
closed. These tactics again denote all the ruses of the order.

"In effect, they thus prevent the order being accused of co-operating
in the revolt.

"Moreover, the members of the belligerent division, as high dignitaries,
form part of the pacific division, but not reciprocally, as the existence
of that division is unknown to the great part of the members of the other
division — the first can fall back on the second in case of want of success.
The brethren of the pacific division are eager to protect by all the means
in their power the brethren of the belligerent division, representing them
as patriots too ardent, who have permitted themselves to be carried away
by the current in defiance of the prescriptions of the order and prudence."

114

Lord Palmerston

servation for the Pope of the Papal States. The balance of
power, as formed by the Congress of Vienna, was considered
by the wisest and most patriotic English statesmen, the best
safeguard for British interests and influence on the Continent.
While it existed the multitude of small States in Italy and
Germany could be always so manipulated by British diplo-
macy, as effectually to prevent that complete isolation which
England feels to-day so keenly, and which may prove so
disastrous within a short period to her best interests. If this
sound policy has been since changed, it is entirely owing to
Palmerston, who appears, after leaving the ranks of the
Tories, to have thrown himself absolutely into the hands of
that Liberalistic Freemasonry, which, at the period, began to
show its power in France and in Europe generally. On his
accession to the Foreign Office in 1830, he found the Cabinet
freed from the influence of George IV, and from Conserva-
tive traditions: and he at once threw the whole weight of
his energy, position and influence to cause his government to
side with the Masonic programme for revolutionizing Europe.
With his aid, the sectaries were able to disturb Spain, Portu-
gal, Naples, the States of the Church, and the minor States of
Italy. The cry for a constitutional Government received his
support in every State of Europe, great and small. The Pope's
temporal authority and every Catholic interest were assailed.
England, indeed, remained quiet. Her people were fascinated
by that fact. Trade interest being served by the distractions
of other States, and religious bigotry gratified at seeing the
Pope, and every Catholic country harassed, they all gave a
willing, even a hearty support to the policy of Palmerston.
They little knew that it was dictated, not by devotion to their
interests, but in obedience to a hidden power of which Pal-
merston had become the dupe and the tool, and which per-
mitted them to glory in their own quiet, only to gain their
assistance and, on a future day, to compass with greater
certainty their ruin. Freemasonry, as we have already seen,
creates many "figure-head" Grand Masters, from the princes
of reigning houses, and the foremost statesmen of nations, to
whom, however, it only shows a small part of its real secrets.
Palmerston was an exception to this rule. He was admitted
into the very recesses of the Sect. He was made its Monarch,
and as such ruled with a real sway over its realms of dark-

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

ness. By this confidence he was flattered, cajoled, and finally
entangled beyond the hope of extrication in the meshes of the
sectaries. He was a noble, without a hope of issue, or of a
near heir to his title and estates. He therefore preferred the
designs of the Atheistic conspiracy he governed, to the in-
terests of the country which employed him, and he sacrificed
England to the projects of Masonry. As he advanced in
years he appears to have grown more infatuated with his
work. In 1837, in or about the time when Nubius was car-
ried off by poison, Mazzini, who most probably caused that
Chief to disappear, and who became the leader of the party
of action, fixed his permanent abode in London. With him
came also several counsellors of the "Grand Patriach", and
from that day forward the liberty of Palmerston to move
England in any direction, except in the interest of the secret
conspiracy, passed away for ever. Immediately, plans were
elaborated destined to move the programme of Weishaupt
another step towards its ultimate completion. 1 These were,
by the aid of well-planned Revolutions, to create one immense
Empire from the small German States, in the centre of
Europe, under the house of Brandenburg; next to weaken
Austrian dominion; then to annihilate the temperal sover-
eignty of the Pope, by the formation of a United Kingdom of

1 In page 340, of his work, Le Juif, &c, already quoted, Gougenot
des Mousseaux reproduces an article from the Political Blatter, of Munich,
in 1862, in which is pointed out the existence in Germany, in Italy, and
in London, of directing-lodges unknown to the mass of Masons, and in
which Jews are in the majority. "At London, where is found the home
of the revolution under the Grand Master, Palmerston, there exists two
Jewish lodges which never permit Christians to pass their threshold.
It is there that ail the threads and all the elements of the revolution are
reunited which are hatched in the Christian lodges." Further, des Mous-
seaux cites the opinion (p. 368) of a Protestant statesman in the service
of a great German Power, who wrote to him in December, 1865, "at the
outbreak of the revolution of 1845 I found myself in relation with a Jew
who by vanity betrayed the secret of the secret societies to which he was
associated, and who informed me eight or ten days in advance of all
the revolutions which were to break out upon every point in Europe.
I owe to him the immovable conviction that all these grand movements
of 'oppressed people', &c, &c, are managed by a half-a-dozen individuals
who give their advice to the secret societies of the whole of Europe."

Henry Misley, a great authority also, wrote to Pere Descnamps.
"I know the world a little, and I know that in all that 'grand future'
which is being prepared, there are not more than four or five persons
who hold the cards. A great number think they hold them, but they
deceive themselves."

116

Lord Palmerston

Italy under the provisional government of the house of
Savoy; and lastly, to form of the discontented Polish, Hun-
garian, and Slavonian populations, an independent kingdom
between Austria and Russia.

After an interval during which these plans were hatched,
Palmerston returned to office in 1 846, and then the influence
of England was seen at work, in the many revolutions which
broke out in Europe within eighteen months afterwards. If
these partly failed, they eventuated at least in giving a
Masonic Ruler to France in the person of the Carbonaro,
Louis Napoleon. With him Palmerston instantly joined the
fortunes of England, and with him he plotted for the realization
of his Masonic ideas to the very end of his career. Now here
comes a most important event, proving beyond question the
determination of Palmerston to sacrifice his country to the
designs of the Sect he ruled. The Conservative feeling in
England shrank from acknowledging Louis Napoleon or
approving of his coup d'etat. The country began to grow afraid
of revolutionists, crowned or uncrowned. This feeling was
shared by the Sovereign, by the Cabinet, and by the Parlia-
ment, so far that Lord Derby was able to move a vote of
censure on the Government, because of the foreign policy of
Lord Palmerston. For Palmerston, confiding in the secret
strength he wielded, and which was not without its influence
in England herself, threw every consideration of loyalty, duty,
and honour overboard, and without consulting his Queen or
his colleagues, he sent, as Foreign Secretary, the recognition
of England to Louis Napoleon. He committed England to
the Empire, and the other nations of Europe had to follow
suit.

On this point Chambers' Encyclopaedia, Art. "Palmer-
ston", has the following notice: — "In December, 1852, the
public was startled at the news that Palmerston was no longer
a member of the Russell Cabinet. He had expressed his
approbation of the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon (gave Eng-
land's official acknowledgment of the perpetration) without
consulting either the Premier or the Queen; and as explana-
tions were refused, Her Majesty exercised her constitutional
right of dismissing her minister." Palmerston had also
audaciously interpolated despatches signed by the Queen. He
acted, in fact, as he pleased. He had the agents of his dark

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

realm, in almost every Masonic lodge in England. The Press
at home and abroad, under Masonic influences, applauded
his policy. The Sect so acted that his measures were produc-
tive of immediate success. His manner, his bonhomie, his
very vices fascinated the multitude. He won the confidence
of the trading classes, and held the Conservatives at bay.
Dismissed by the Sovereign, he soon returned into power her
master, and from that day to the day of his death ruled
England and the world in the interests of the Atheistic
Revolution, of which he thought himself the master spirit. 1

1 Mr. F. Hugh O'Donnell, the able M.P. for Dungarvan, contributed
to the pages of the Dublin Freeman's Journal a most useful and interesting
paper which showed on his part a careful study of the works of Mgr. Segur
and other continental authorities on Freemasonry. In this, he says, regard-
ing his own recollections of contemporary events: — "It is now many years
since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the Rev. Sir Christopher
Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive words. Speaking of the
tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence of Lord Palmerston against
the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir Christopher Bellew said: —
"Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He would
never have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English
Cabinet Minister. But he is a Freemason and one of the highest and
greatest of Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal
Voice through the lodges of Europe. And to obtain that rank he must
have given the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred of the Catholic
Church."

"Another illustration of the manner in which European events are
moved by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby,
M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one
of the most unobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate
and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was
commissioned to obtain and preserve the names and addresses of all
the Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service
in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these
men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters — "fearful scoundrels"
General Burnaby called them — dispersed to their native provinces, but
the clue to find them again was in General Burnaby's hands, and when
a couple of years later Cavour and Palmerston in conjunction with the
Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian
Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was communicated to
the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldian
Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several
hundreds of "fearful scoundrels," who had learned military skill and
discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form the
corps of his celebrated "Army of Emancipation" in the two Sicilies and
the Roman States. While the British diplomatists at Turin and Naples
carried on, under cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous portion
of the Carbonarist conspiracy, the taxpayers of Great Britain contributed
in this manner to raise and train an army destined to confiscate the posses-
sions of the Religious Orders and the Church in Italy, and, in its remoter
operation, to assail, and, if possible, destroy the world-wide mission of
the Holy Propaganda itself.

118

Lord Palmerston

We shall see the truth of this when considering the
political action of the Sect he led, but first it will be necessary
to glance at what the Church and Christianity generally had
to suffer in his day.

119

XVIII

WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PARTY

DURING what may be called the reign of Palmerston, the
war of the intellectual party against Christianity, intensified
in the dark counsels of the Alta Vendita, became accentuated
and general throughout Europe. It chiefly lay in the propa-
gandism of immorality, luxury, and naturalism amongst
all classes of society, and then in the spread of Atheistic
and revolutionary ideas. During the time of Palmerston's
influence not one iota of the advices of the Alta Vendita was
permitted to be wasted. Wherever, therefore, it was possible
to advance the programme mapped out in the 'Permanent
Instruction," in the letter of Piccolo Tigre, and in the advices
of Vindex, that was done with effect. We see, therefore,
France, Italy, Germany, Spain, America, and the rest of
the world, deluged with immoral novels, immodest prints,
pictures, and statues, and every legislature invited to legalise
a system of prostitution, under pretence of expediency,
which gave security to sinners, and a kind of recognized
status to degraded women. We find, wherever Masonry could
effect it, these bad influences brought to bear upon the univer-
sities, the army, the navy, the training schools, the civil ser-
vice, and upon the whole population. "Make corrupt hearts
and you will have no more Catholics," said Vindex, and
faithfully, and with effect, the secret societies of Europe have
followed that advice. Hence, in France under the Empire,
Paris, bad enough before, became a very pandemonium of
vice; and Italy just in proportion to the conquests of the
Revolution, became systematically corrupted on the very
lines laid down by the Alta Vendita.

Next, laws subversive of Christian morality were caused
to be passed in every State, on, of course, the most plausible
pretexts. These laws were first that of divorce, then, the
abolition of impediments to marriage, such as consanguinity,
order, and relationship, union with a deceased wife's sister,
etc. Well the Infidels knew that in proportion as nations fell

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War of the Intellectual Party

away from the holy restraints of the Church, and as the
sanctity and inviolability of the marriage bond became
weakened, the more Atheism would enter into the human
family.

Moreover, the few institutions of a public, Christian
nature yet remaining in Christian States were to be removed
one after another on some skilfully devised, plausible plea.
The Sabbath which in the Old as well as in the New Dispen-
sation, proved so great an advantage to religion and to man
— to nations as well as to individuals — was marked out for
desecration. The leniency of the Church which permitted
certain necessary works on Sunday, was taken advantage of,
and the day adroitly turned into one of common trading
in all the great towns of Catholic Continental Europe. The
Infidels, owing to a previous determination arrived at in the
lodges, clamoured for permission to open museums and
places of public amusement on the days sacred to the services
of religion, in order to distract the population from hearing
Mass and worshipping God. Not that they cared for the
unfortunate working man. If the Sabbath ceased tomorrow,
he would be the slave on Sunday that they leave him to
be during the rest of the week. The one day of rest would
be torn from the labouring population, and their lot drawn
nearer than before to that absolute slavery which always
did exist and would exist again, under every form of Idolatry
and Infidelity. Pending the reduction of men to Socialism,
the secret conclave directing the whole mass of organized
Atheism has therefore taken care that in order to withdraw
the working man from attending divxne worship and hearing
the Word of God, theatres, cafes, pleasure gardens, drinking
saloons, and other still worse means of popular enjoyment
shall be made to exert the utmost influence on him upon
that day. This sad influence is beginning to be felt amongst
ourselves. Then, besides the suppression of State recognition
to religion, chaplains to the army, the navy, the hospitals,
the prisons, etc., were to be withdrawn on the plea of expense
or of being unnecessary. Courts of justice, and public assem-
blies were to be deprived of every Christian symbol. This
was to be done on the plea of religion being too sacred to
be permitted to enter into such places. In courts, in society,
at dinners, etc., Christian habits, like that of grace before

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

meals, etc., or any social recognition of God's presence, were
to be scouted as not in good taste. The company of ecclesia-
stics was to be shunned, and a hundred other able means
were devised to efface the Christian aspect of the nations until
they presented an appearance more devoid of religion than
that of the very pagans.

But of all the attacks made by Infidels during the reign
of Palmerston, that upon primary, middle-class, and superior
education was the most marked, the most determined, and
decidedly, when successful, the most disastrous.

We must remember that from the commencement of the
war of Atheism on Christianity, under Voltaire and the
Encyclopaedists, this means of doing mischief was the one
most advocated by the chief leaders. They then accumulated
immense sums to diffuse their own bad literature amongst
every class. Under the Empire, the most disastrous blow
struck by the Arch-Mason Talleyrand was the formation
of a monopoly of education for Infidelity in the foundation
of the Paris University. But it was left for the Atheistic
plotters of this century to perfect the plan of wresting the
education of every class and sex of the coming generations
of men from out of the hands of the Church, and the influence
of Christianity.

This plan was apparently elaborated as early as 1826, by
intellectual Masonry. About that time appeared a dialogue
between Quintex and Eugene Sue, in which after the manner
of the letter of Vindex to Nubins the whole programme of
the now progressing education war was sketched out. In this
the hopes which Masonry had from Protestantism in countries
where the population was mixed, were clearly expressed.
The jealousy of rival Sects was to be excited, and when they
could not agree, then the State was to be induced to do away
with all kinds of religion "just for peace sake," and establish
schools on a purely secular basis, entirely removed from
"clerical control," and handed over to lay teachers, whom
in time Atheism could find means to "control" most surely.
But in purely Catholic countries, where such an argument
as the differences of Sects could not be adduced, then the cry
was to be against clerical versus lay teaching. Religious
teachers were to be banished by the strong hand, as at present
in France, and afterwards it could be said that lay teachers

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War of the Intellectual Party

were not competent or willing to give religious instruction,
and so that, too, in time, could be made to disappear. 1

One may here call to mind the fact that it was while
Lord Palmerston directed Masonry as Monarch, and English
policy as Minister, that an insidious attempt was made to
introduce secularism into higher education in Ireland by

1 The late celebrated Mgr. Dupanloup published, in 1875, an invaluable
little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of the most eminent
Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions taken in principal
lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary organs, proofs that
what is here stated is correct. The following extracts regarding education
will show what Masonry has been doing in regard to that most vital
question. Mgr. Dupanloup says: — "In the great lodge called the 'Rose
of Perfect Silence, it was proposed at one time for the consideration
of the brethren: — 'Ought religious education to be suppressed?' This
was answered as follows: — 'Without any doubt the principal of super-
natural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a man his dignity, is
useless for the discipline of children, and there is also in it, the danger of
the abandonment of all morality' . . . 'The respect, specially due to
the child, prohibits the teaching to him of doctrines, which disturb his
reason'."

To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over,
for the diffusion of irreligious education, it will be sufficient to quote the
view of the Monde Maconnique on the subject. It says, in its issue of May 1st,
1865, "An immense field is open to our activity. Ignorance and super-
stition weigh upon the world. Let us seek to create schools, professorial
chairs, libraries." Impelled by the general movement thus infused into
the body, the Masonic (French) Convention of 1870, came unanimously
to the following decision: — "The Masonry of France associates itself
with the forces at work in the country to render education gratuitous,
obligatory, and laic."

We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these
Masonic aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of
the Belgian Freemasons, a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst
universal applause. "When ministers shall come to announce to the country
that they intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud,
'to me a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left, to
me the teaching, to me the examination, to me the solution.' "

Mgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having profes-
sional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the Australian
colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking countries. At the time, the
movement was but just being initiated in France, but it could not deceive
him. In a pamphlet, to which all the bishops of France adhered, and which
was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate, he showed clearly
that these schools had two faces, on one of which was written "Professional
Instruction for Girls" and on the other, "Away with Christianity in life
and death." "Without woman," said Brother Albert Leroy, at an Inter-
national Congress of Masons, in Paris, in 1867, "all the men united can do
nothing" — nothing to effectually de-Christianize the world.

But as we have seen the great aim of the Alta Vendita was to corrupt
woman. "As we cannot suppress her," said Vindex to Nubius, "let us
corrupt her with the Church," The method best adapted for this was
to alienate her from religion by an infidel education.

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

Queen's Colleges, and into primary education by certain acts
of the Board of National Education. The fidelity of the Irish
Episcopacy and the ever vigilant watchfulness of the Holy
See, disconcerted both plans, or neutralized them to a great
extent. Attempts of a like kind are being made in England.
There, by degrees, board schools with almost unlimited
assistance from taxes have been first made legal, and then
encouraged most adroitly. The Church schools have been
systematically discouraged, and have now reached the point
of danger. This has been effected, first, by the Masonry of
Palmerston in high places, and secondly, by the Masonry
of England generally, not in actual league and knowingly,
with the dark direction I speak of, but unknowingly influenced
by its well-devised cries for the spread of light, for the diffusion
of education amongst the masses, for the banishment of
religious discord, etc. It was, of course, never mentioned,
that all the advantages cried up could be obtained, together
with the still greater advantage of a Christian education,
producing a future Christian population. It was sedu-
lously kept out of sight that the people who would be certain
to use board schools, were those who never went themselves
to any church, and who would never think of giving religious
instruction of any kind to their children. Nothing can show
the power of Freemasonry in a stronger light than the stupor
it was able to cast over the men who make laws in both
Houses of the English Parliament, and who were thus hood-
winked into training up men fitted to take position, wealth,
and bread itself, from themselves and their children; to
subject, in another generation, the moneyed classes of England
to the lot that befell other blinded "moneyed people" in
France during the last century. In England, the Freemasons
had, unfortunately, the Dissenters as allies. Hatred for
church schools caused the latter to make common cause
with Atheists against God, but the destruction of the Church
of England — they do not hope for the destruction of the
vigorous Catholic Church of the country — will never com-
pensate even Socinians for a spirit of instructed irreligion
in England — a spirit which, in a generation, will be able and
only too willing to attempt Atheistic levelling for its own
advantage, and certainly not for the benefit of wealthy Dis-
senters, or Dissenters having anything at all to lose.

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War of the Intellectual Party

The same influences of Atheism were potent, and for the
same reasons, in all Australian legislatures. There the
influence of continental Freemasonry is stronger than at
home, and conservative influences which neutralize Atheistic
movements of too democratic a nature in England and
Scotland, are weaker. Hence, in all Australian Parliaments,
Acts are passed with but a feeble resistance from the Church
Party, abolishing religious education of every kind, and
making all the education of the country "secular, compulsory
and free." That is, without religion, enforced upon every
class, and at the general expense of the State. Hence, after
paying the taxation in full, the Catholic and the conscientious
Christian of the Church of England, have to sustain in all
those colonies their own system of education, and this, while
paying for the other system, and while bearing the additional
burden of the competition of State schools, richly and com-
pletely endowed with every possible requisite and luxury
out of the general taxes.

A final feature in the education-war of Atheism against
the Church especially, and against Christianity of every kind,
is the attempted higher education without religion of young
girls. The expense which they have induced every legislature
to undertake for this purpose is amazing; and how the
nations tolerate that expense is equally amazing. It is but
carrying out to the letter the advice of Vindex: — "If we
cannot suppress woman, let us corrupt her together with the
Church." For this purpose those infamous hot-beds of foul
vice, "lodges of adoption," lodges for women, and "andro-
gynes," — lodges for libertine Masons and women — were
established by the Illuminati of France in the last century.
For the same purpose schools for the higher education of
young girls are now devised. This we know by the open
avowal of leading Masons. They were introduced into France,
Belgium, Italy, and Germany for the purpose of withdrawing
young girls of the middle and upper classes from the blessed,
safe control of nuns in convents, and of leading them to
positive Atheism by Infidel masters and Infidel associates.
This design of the lodges is succeeding in its mission of terrible
mischief; but, thank God, not amongst the daughters of
respectable Christians of any kind, who value the chastity,
the honour, or the future happiness here and hereafter of that

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

sex of their children, who need most care and delicacy
in educating.

In the extract from the permanent instruction of the Alia
Vendita, you have already seen how astutely the Atheists
compassed the corruption of youth in Universities. It is
since notorious that in all high schools over which they have
been able to obtain influence, the students have been deprived
of religion, taught to mock and hate it, allured to vicious
courses, and have been placed under professors without reli-
gion or morality. How can we be surprised if the Universities
of the Continent have become the hot-beds of vice, revolution,
and Atheism? Moreover, when Masonry governs, as in
France, Italy, and Germany, the only way for youth to obtain
a livelihood on entering upon life is by being affiliated to
Masonry; and the only way to secure advancement is to be
devoted to the principles, the intrigues, and the interests of
the Sect.

The continuous efforts of Masonry, aided by an im-
moral and Atheistic literature, by a corrupt public opinion,
by a zealous Propagandism of contempt for the Church, for
her ministers and her ministratons, and by a sleepless, able
Directory devoted to the furtherance of every evil end, are
enough in all reason to ruin Christianity if that were not
Divine. But. in addition to its intellectual efforts, Masonry
has had from the beginning another powerful means of
destroying the existing social and Christian order of the
world in the interests of Atheism.

126

XIX

A WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON

FATHER Deschamps, on the authority of Eckert and Misley,
gives an interesting description of all that Freemasonry,
under the direction of Lord Palmerston, attempted and
effected after the failure of the revolutionary movements,
conducted by the party of action, under Mazzini, in 1848.
These were fomented to a large extent by British diplomacy
and secret service money manipulated by Lord Palmerston.
Under his guidance and assistance, Mazzini had organized
all his revolutionary Sects. Young Italy, Young Poland,
Young Europe, and the rest sprang as much from the one
as from the other. But after years of close union, Mazzini,
who was probably hated by Palmerston, and dreaded as the
murderer of Nubius, began to wane in influence. He and
his party felt, of course, the inevitable effects of failure;
and the leader subsided without, however, losing any of
his utility for the Sect. Napoleon III appears to have sup-
planted him in the esteem of Palmerston, and would, had he
dared, have ceased to follow the Carbonari. Mazzini accord-
ingly hated Napoleon III with a deadly hatred, which he
lived to be able to gratify signally when Palmerston was no
more. As he was the principal means of raising Palmerston to
power in the Alta Vendita, so, after Palmerston had passed
away, he introduced another great statesman, to the high
conductors, if not into the high conduct itself, of the whole
conspiracy; and caused a fatal blow to be given to France
and to the dynasty of Napoleon. Meanwhile, from 1849 to
the end of the life of Palmerston, the designs formed by the
high council of secret Atheism, were carried out with a per-
fection, a vigour, and a success never previously known in
their history. Nothing was precipitated; yet everything
marched rapidly to realization. The plan of Palmerston — or
the plan of the deadly council which plotted under him — was
to separate the two great conservative empires of Russia
and Austria, while, at the same time, dealing a deadly blow
at both. It was easy for Palmerston to make England see the

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

utility of weakening Russia, which threatened her Indian
possessions. France could be made to join in the fray, by her
ruler, and the powerful Masonic influence at his command:
hence the Russian campaign of 1852. But it was necessary
for this war to keep Prussia and Austria quiet, Prussia was
bribed by a promise to get, in time, the Empire of United
Germany. Austria was frightened by the resolution of
England and France to bring war to the Danube, and so
form a projected Kingdom in Poland and Hungary. The
joint power of England, France, and Turkey could easily,
then, with the aid of the populations interested, form the new
kingdom, and so effectually curb Russia and Austria. But it
was of more importance for the designs of the sect upon the
temporal power of the Pope, and upon Austria herself, to
separate the Empires. Palmerston succeeded with Austria,
who withdrew from her alliance with Russia. The forces
therefore of England and France, were ordered from the
Danube to the barren Crimea, as payment for her neutrality.
This bribe proved the ruin of Austrian influence. As soon
as Russia was separated from her, and weakened beyond
the power of assisting her, if she would, France, countenanced
by England, dealt a deadly blow at Austrian rule in Italy,
united Italy, and placed the temporal power of the Pope
in the last stage of decay. On the other hand, Prussia was
permitted to deal a blow soon after at Austria. This finished
the prestige of the latter as the leading power in Germany,
and confined her to her original territory, with the loss of
Venice, her remaining Italian province. After this war,
Palmerston passed away, and Mazzini came, once more, into
authority in the Sect. He remembered his grudge against
Napoleon, and at once used his influence with the high direc-
tion of Masonry to abandon France and assist Germany; and,
on the promise of Bismarck — a promise fulfilled by the May
laws — that Germany should persecute the Church as it was
persecuted in Italy, Masonry went over to Germany, and
Masons urged on Napoleon to that insane expedition which
ended in placing Germany as the arbiter of Europe, and
France and the dynasty of Napoleon in ruins. In the authori-
ties quoted, there is abundant proof that Masonry, just as
it had assisted the French Revolution and Napoleon I, now
assisted the Germans. It placed treason on the side of the

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A War Party under Palmerston

French, and sold in fact the unfortunate country and her
unscrupulous ruler. Mazzini forced Italy not to assist
Napoleon, and was gratified to find before his death, that
the liar and traitor, who, in the hope of getting assistance
he did not get from Masonry, had dealt his last blow at the
Vicar of Christ, and placed Rome and the remnant of the
States of the Church in the hands of the King of Italy, had lost
the throne and gained the unenviable character of a coward
and a fool.

This is necessarily but a brief glance at the programme,
which Atheism has both planned and carried out since the
rule of Palmerston commenced. Wherever it prevailed, the
worst from of persecution of the Church at once began to
rage. In Sardinia, as soon as it obtained hold of the King
and Government, the designs of the French Revolution were
at once carried out against religion. The State itself employed
the horrible and impure contrivances of the Alta Vendita for
the corruption and demoralisation of every class of the people.
The flood gates of hell were opened. Education was at once
made completely secular. Religious teachers were banished.
The goods of the religious orders were confiscated. Their
convents, their land, their very churches were sold, and they
themselves were forced to starve on a miserable pension, while
a succession was rigorously prohibited. All recognition of the
spiritual power of Bishops was put to an end. The priesthood
was systematically despised and degraded. The whole ministry
of the Church was harassed in a hundred vexatious ways.
Taxes of a crushing character were levied on the administra-
tion of the sacraments, on masses, and on the slender incomes
of the parish clergy. Matrimony was made secular, divorce
legalised, the privileges of the clerical state abrogated. Worse
than all, the leva or conscription was rigorously enforced.
Candidates for the priesthood at the most trying season of
their career, were compelled to join the army for a number
of years, and exposed to all the snares which the Alta Vendita
had astutely prepared to destroy their purity, and with it, of
course, their vocations; "make vicious hearts, and you will
have no more Catholics." Besides these measures made and
provided by public authority, every favour of the State, its
power of giving honours, patronage and place, was constantly
denied to Catholics. To get any situation of value in the

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

army, navy, civil service, police, revenue, on the railways, in
the telegraph offices, to be a physician to the smallest munici-
pality, to be employed almost anywhere, it was necessary to
be a Freemason, or to have powerful Masonic influence. The
press, the larger mercantile firms, important manufactories,
depending as such institutions mostly do on State patronage
and interest, were also in the hands of the Sectaries. To
Catholics was left the lot of slaves. If permitted to exist at all,
it was as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The
lands which those amongst them held, who did not forsake
religion, were taxed to an unbearable extent. The condition
of the faithful Catholic peasants became wretched from the
load of fiscal burdens placed upon them. The triumph of
Atheism could not be more complete, so far as having all
that the world could give on its side, and leaving to the
Church scarcely more than covered her Divine Founder upon
the Cross.

Bismarck, though assisted in his wars against France by
the brave Catholic soldiers of the Rhine, and of the Father-
land generally, no sooner had his rival crushed, and his
victory secured, than he hastened to pay to Freemasonry his
promised persecution of the Church. The Freemasons in the
German Parliament, and the Ministers of the Sect, aided him
to prepare measures against the Catholic religion as drastic
as those in operation in Italy, even worse in many respects.
The religious orders of men and women were rigorously sup-
pressed or banished, as a first instalment. Then fell Catholic
education to make way for an Infidel propagandism. Next
came harassing decrees against the clergy by which Bishops
were banished or imprisoned and parishes were deprived in
hundreds of their priests. All the bad, immoral influences,
invented and propagated by the Sectaries, were permitted to
run riot in the land. A schism was attempted in the Church.
Ecclesiastical education was corrupted in the very bud, and
all but the existence of Catholics was proscribed.

Wherever we find the dark sect triumphant we find the
same results. In the Republics of South America, where
Freemasonry holds the highest places, the condition of the
Church is that of normal persecution and vexation of every
kind. It has been so for many years in Spain and Portugal, in
Switzerland, and to whatever extent Freemasons can accom-

130

A War Party under Palmerston

plish it, in Belgium and in Austria. The dark Directory suc-
ceeding Weishaupt, the Alta Vendita, and Palmerston, sits in
Paris and in Berlin almost openly, and prepares at leisure its
measures, which are nothing short of, first, the speedy weak-
ening of the Church, and then a bloody attempt at her
extermination. If it goes on slower than it did during the
French Revolution, it is in order to go on surer. Past ex-
perience, too, and the determinations of the sect already
arrived at, show but too clearly that a single final consum-
mation is kept steadily in view. The impure assassins who
conduct the conspiracy have had no scruple to imbue their
hands in the blood of Christians in the past, and they never
will have a scrapie to do so, whenever there is hope of success.
In fact, from what I have seen and studied on the Continent,
an attempt at this ultimate means of getting rid at least of
the clergy and principal lay leaders amongst Catholics,
might take place in France and even in Italy at any moment.
In France, some new measure of persecution is introduced
every day. The Concordat is broken openly. The honour of
the country is despised. Subventions belonging by contract to
the clergy are withdrawn. The insolence of the Atheistical
Government, relying on the strength of the army and on the
unaccountable apathy or cowardice of the French Catholic
laity, progresses so fast, that no act of the Revolution of 1789
or of the Commune, can be thought improbable within the
present decade; and Italy would be sure to follow any example
set by France in this or in any other method of exterminating
the Church.

There are sure signs in all the countries where the
Atheistic Revolution has made decided progress, that this
final catastrophe is planned already, and that its instruments
are in course of preparation. These instruments are something
the same as were devised by the illuminated lodges, when the
power of the French Revolution began to pass from the
National Assembly to the clubs. The clubs were the open and
ultimate expression of the destructive, anti-Christianity of
Atheism; and when the lodges reached so far, there was no
further need for secrecy. That which in the jargon of the Sect
is called "the object of the labour of ages," was attained.
Man was without God or Faith, King or Law. He had reached
the level aimed at by the Commune, which is itself the

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

ultimate end of all Masonry, and all that secret Atheistic
plotting which, since the rise of Atheism, has filled the world.
In our day, if Masonry does not found Jacobite or other
clubs, it originates and cherishes movements fully as Satanic
and as dangerous. Communism, just like Carbonarism, is but
a form of the illuminated Masonry of Weishaupt. "Our end,"
said the Alta Vendita, "is that of Voltaire and the French
Revolution," Names and methods are varied, but that end is
ever the same. The clubs at the period of the French Revolu-
tion were, after all, local. Masonry now endeavours to gener-
alise their principles and their powers of destructive activity
on a vastly more extended scale. We therefore no longer hear
of Jacobins or Girondins, but we hear of movements destined
to be for all countries what the Jacobins and the Girondins
were for Paris and for France. As surely, and for the same
purpose, as the clubs proceeded from the lodges in 1789, so,
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the lodges sent
out upon the whole civilized world, for the very same intent,
the terrible Socialist organizations, all founded upon the lines
of Communism, and called according to the exigencies of
time, place, and condition.

132

XX

THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS,
THE BLACKHAND, &c.

THERE are multitudes in Freemasonry — even in the most
"advanced" Freemasonry of Italy and France — who have
no real wish to see the principles of these anarchists pre-
dominate. Those, for instance, who in advocating the theories
of Voltaire, and embracing for their realization the organiza-
tion of Weishaupt, saw only a means to get for themselves
honours, power, and riches, which they could never otherwise
obtain but by Freemasonry, would be well pleased enough
to advance no further, once the good things they loved
had been gained. "Nous voulons, Messieurs,"" said Thiers, "la
republique, mais la republique conservatrice." He and his desired,
of course, to have the Republic which gave them all this
world had to bestow, at the expense of former possessors.
They desired also the destruction of a religion which crossed
their corrupt inclinations, and which was suspected of
sympathy for the state of things which Masonry had sup-
planted. But they had no intention, if they could help it,
to descend again to the level of the masses from which they
had sprung. In Italy, for instance, this class of Freemasons
have had supreme power in their hands for over a quarter
of a century. They obtained it by professing the strongest
sympathy for the down-trodden millions whom they called
slaves. They stated that these slaves — the bulk of the Italian
people in the country and in the cities — were no better
than tax-paying machines, the dupes and drudges of their
political tyrants. Victor Emmanuel, when he wanted, as
he said, "to liberate them from political tyrants," declared
that a cry came to him from the "enslaved Italy," composed
of these down-trodden, unregenerated millions. He and his
Freemasons and Carbonari — the party of direction and the
party of action — therefore drove the native princes of the
people from their thrones, and seized supreme sway through-
out the Italian peninsula. Were the millions of "slaves"
served by the change? The whole property of the Church

133

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

was seized upon. Were the burdens of taxation lightened ?
Very far from it. The change simply put hungry Freemasons,
and chiefly those of Piedmont, in possession of the Church
lands and revenues. It dispossessed many ancient Catholic
proprietors, in order to put Freemasons in their stead.
But with what consequence to the vast mass of the people,
to the peasantry and the working population — some twenty-
four out of the twenty-six millions of the Italian people?
The consequence is this, that after a quarter of a century
of vaunted "regenerated Masonic rule", during which "the
liberators" were at perfect liberty to confer any blessings
they pleased upon the people as such, the same people are
at this moment more miserable than at any past period of
their history, at least since Catholicism became predominant
as the religion of the country. If their natural princes ever
"whipped them with whips" for the good of the state, Free-
masonry, under the House of Savoy, slashes them with
scorpions, for the good of the fraternity. To keep power
in the hands of the Atheists an army, ten times greater, and
ten times more costly than before, had to be supported by
the "liberated" people. A worthless but ruinously expensive
navy has been created and must be kept by the same unfortu-
nate "regenerated" people. These poor people, "regenerated
and liberated," must man the fleets and supply the rank and
file of Army and Navy; they must give their sons, at the
most useful period of their lives, to the "service" of Masonic
"United Italy." But the officials in both army and navy —
and their number is legion — supported by the taxes of the
people, are Freemasons or the sons of Freemasons. They
vegetate in absolute uselessness, so far as the development of
the country is concerned, living in comparative luxury upon
its scanty resources. The civil service, like the army and
navy, is swelled with "government billets," out of all pro-
portion to the wants of the people. It is filled with Freemasons.
It is a paradise of Freemasons, where Piedmontese patriots,
who have intrigued with Cavour or fought under Garibaldi,
enjoy otium cum dignitate at the expense of the hard earnings
of a people very poor at any time, but by the present "re-
generated" regime made more wretched and miserable than
any Christian peasantry — not even excepting the peasantry
of Ireland — on the face of the earth.

134

The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c.

The consequence of the "liberation" wrought by the
Freemasons in Italy is this: They clamoured for representa-
tive institutions. All their revolutions were made under the
pretext that these were not granted — and the mass of Italian
people — seven-eighths of them — are as yet unenfranchised,
after a quarter of a century of Masonic supremacy in the
land. The Masons represented the lot of the poor man as
insupportable, under the native princes. But under them-
selves the poor man's condition, instead of being ameliorated,
has been made unspeakably worse. He is positively, at
present, ground down, in every little town of Italy, by in-
supportable exactions. His former burdens are increased
four-fold — in many cases, ten-fold. To find money for all
the extravagances of Masonic rule — to make fortunes for the
men at the top, and comfortable places for the rank and file
of the sect, a system of taxation, the most elaborate, severe,
and searching ever yet invented to crush a nation, has been
devised. The peasant's rent is raised by Masonic greed when-
ever a Mason becomes a proprietor, as is often the case with
regard to confiscated church lands. Land taxes cause the
rents to rise everywhere. The tenant must bear them. Then
every article of the produce of his little rented holding is taxed
as he approaches the city gates to sell it. At home his pig is
taxed, his dog, if he can keep one, his fowl, his house, his
fireplace, his window light, his scanty earnings, titulo servizio,
all are specially, and for the poor, heavily taxed. The con-
sequence of this is, that few Italian peasants can, since Italy
became "United," drink the wine they produce, or eat the
wheat they grow. Flesh meat, once in common use, is now
as rare with them, as it used to be with the peasantry in
Ireland. Milk or butter they hardly ever taste. Their food,
often sadly insufficient, is reduced to pizzi, a kind of cake
made of Maize or Indian meal and vegetables or fruit when
in season. Their drink is plain water. They are happy when
they can mingle with it a little vinaccio, a liquid made after
the grapes are pressed and the wine drawn off, by pouring
water on the refuse. Their homes are cheerless and miser-
able, their children left to live in ignorance, without schooling,
employed in coarse labour, and clothed in rags. The Grand
Duke of Tuscany had by wise and generous regulations placed
hundreds, yea, even thousands of these peasants, happy as

135

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

independent farmers on their own land. The crushing load of
taxation has caused these to disappear, and their little hold-
ings have been sold by auction to pay taxes, and have passed,
of course, into the hands of speculators, generally Free-
masons, who, when they become landlords, vie with the worst
of their class, in Ireland, in greed. In the States of the Church,
where the careful, most Christian, and compassionate
spirit and legislation of the Vicar of Christ prevailed, the
peasantry ate their own bread, drank their own wine, and
were decently, nay even picturesquely clad, as all travellers
know, before the "liberation" of the Masonic Piedmontese.
Not a family was without a little hoard of savings for the age
of the old, and for the provision and placing in life of the
young. Now, gaunt misery, even starvation, is the charac-
teristic of these populations, after only some fifteen years of
Masonic rule. The vast revenues of the Church are gone,
none know wither. The nation is none the better for them,
and the populace, in their dire poverty, can no longer go to
the convent-gate, where before the poor never asked for bread
in vain. The religious, deprived of their possessions, and
severely repressed, have no longer food to give. They are
fast disappearing, and the people already experience that the
promises of Freemasonry, like the promises of its real author,
are but apples of ashes, given but to lure, to deceive, and
to destroy.

The Freemasonry of France and other Continental
nations, which has done so much to give effect to the principles
of Voltaire and Weishaupt, wishes decidedly not to go beyond
the role played by the Freemasonry of Italy. But in France,
as in Italy, an inexorable power is behind them, pushing
them on, and also fanatically determined to push them off
the scene when the time is ripe for doing so. This the Free-
masons of Italy well know; this the men now in power in
France feel. But if they move against the current coming
upon them from the depths of Freemasonry, woe to them.
The knife of the assassin is ready. The sentence of death
is there, which they are too often told to remember, and
which has before now reached the very foremost men of
the sect who refused, or feared, for motives good or bad, to
advance as quickly as the hidden chiefs of the Revolution
desired and decreed. It "removed" Nubius in the days of

136

The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c.

Mazzini. It "removed" Gambetta before our eyes. It
aimed frequently at Napoleon III and would most assuredly
have struck home, but its aim was only to terrify him so that
he as a Carbonaro would be made to do its work soon and
effectively. Masonry obtained its end, and Napoleon marched
to the Italian war, and to his doom.

It is this invisible power, this secret, sleepless, fanatical
Directory, which causes the solidarity most evidently sub-
sisting between Freemasonry in its many degrees and aspects
and the various parties of anarchists which now arise every-
where in Europe. In the last century kings, princes, nobles,
took up Masonry. It swept them all away before that century
closed. In the beginning and progress of this century, the
Bourgeoisie took it up with still greater zest, and made it all
their own. For a long time they would not tolerate such a
thing as a poor Mason. Poverty was their enemy. What has
come to pass? The Bourgeoisie at this moment are the
peculiar enemy of the class of workmen who have invaded
"Black" or "Illuminated" Masonry, and made it at last
completely theirs. The Bourgeoisie are now called upon by
the Socialists to be true to the real levelling principles of the
brotherhood — to practise as well as preach "liberty, equality,
and fraternity"; to divide their possessions with the working
men — to descend to that elysium of Masonry, the level of
the Commune — or die.

It is strange how Masonry, being what it is, has always
managed to get a princely or noble leader for every one
of its distinct onward movements against princes, property,
and society. It had Egalite to lead the movement against the
throne of France in the last century. It had the Duke of
Brunswick, Frederick II and Joseph II to assist. In this
century we see it ornamented by Louis Philippe, Napoleon III,
Victor Emmanuel and others as figure-heads; Nubius and
Palmerston, both won from the leaders of the Conservative
nobility, were its real chiefs. Now, when it appears in its
worst possible form, it is championed by no less a personage
than a Russian Prince, of high lineage, a representative
of the wealthiest, most exclusive, and perhaps richest aristo-
cracy in the world. We find that in all cases of seduction
like this, the promise of mighty leadership has been the bait
by which the valuable dupe has been caught by the sectaries.

137

Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

The advice of Piccolo Tigre for the seduction of princes has
thus never been without its effect.

These new anarchial societies are not mere haphazard
associations. They are most ably organised. There is, for
instance, in the International, three degrees, or rather distinct
societies, the one, however, led by the other. First come the
International Brethren. These know no country but the
Revolution; no other enemy but "reaction." They refuse
all conciliation or compromise, and they regard every move-
ment as "reactionary" the moment it ceases to have for its
object, directly or indirectly, the triumph of the principles of
the French Revolution. They cannot go to any tribunal other
than a jury of themselves, and must assist each other, lawfully
or otherwise, to the "very limits of the possible." No one is
admitted who has not the firmness, fidelity, intelligence, and
energy considered sufficient by the chiefs, to carry out as well
as to accept the programme of the Revolution. They may
leave the body, but if they do, they are put under the strictest
surveillance, and any violation of the secret or indiscretion,
damaging to the cause, is punished inexorably by death.
They are not permitted to join any other society, secret or
otherwise, or to take any public appointment without permis-
sion from their local committee; and then they must make
known all secrets which could directly or indirectly serve the
International cause.

The second class of Internationalists are the National
Brethren. These are local socialists, and are not permitted
even to suspect the existence of the International Brethren,
who move among them and guide them in virtue of higher
degree. They figure in the meetings of the society, and con-
stitute the grand army of insurrection; they are, without
knowing it, completely directed by the others. Both classes
are formed strictly upon the lines laid down by Weishaupt.

The third class compromises all manner of workmen's
societies. With these the two first mingle, and direct to the
profit of the Revolution. The death penalty for indiscretion
or treason is common in every degree.

The Black Hand and the Nihilists, are directed by the
same secret agency, to violence and intrigue. Amongst them,
but unknown to most of them, are the men of the higher
degrees, who in dark concert, easily guide the others as they

138

The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c,

please. They administer oaths, plan assassinations, urge on
to action, and terrorize a whole country, leaving the rank and
file who execute these things to their fate. It is unnecessary
to dwell longer upon these sectaries, well known by the out-
rages they perpetrate.

These terrible societies are unquestionably connected
with, and governed by, the dark directory, which now, as at
all times since the days of Weishaupt, rules the secret societies
of the world. Mahommedanism permitted the assassins
gathered under the "old man of the mountain," to assist in
spreading the faith of Islam by terrorising its Christian
enemies. For a like purpose, whenever it judges it opportune,
the dark Alia Vendita employs the assassins wholesale and
retail of the secret societies. It believes it can control when
it pleases these ruthless enemies of the human race. In this,
as Nubius found out, it is far mistaken. But the encourage-
ment of murderers as a "skirmishing" party of the Cos-
mopolitan Revolution remains since the day of Weishaupt
— a policy kept steadily in view. To-day, that party is used
against some power such as that of the Popes, or the petty
princes of Italy. Great powers like England, in the belief that
the mischief will stop in Italy, rejoice in the results attained
by assassination. To-morrow it suits the policy of the Alia
Vendita to make a blow at aristocracy in England, at despo-
tism in Russia, at monarchy in Spain; and at once we find
Invincibles formed from the advanced amongst the Fenians;
Nihilists and the Black Hand from the ultras of the Carbonari;
and Young Russia, ready to use dynamite and the knife and
the revolver, reckless of every consequence, for the ends of
the secret directory with which the diplomacy of the world
has now to count. The professional lectures on the use and
manufacture of dynamite given to Nihilists in Paris, the num-
bers of them gathered together in that capital, the retreat
afforded them there to the known murderers of the Emperor
Alexander, excited little comment in England. If referred to
at all in the press, it was not with that vigorous abhorrence
which such proceedings should create. Often a chuckle of
satisfaction has been indulged in by some at the fact. The
utterances of the "advanced" members of the Masonic Intel-
lectual party in the French Senate excusing Nihilists, were
quoted with a kind of "faint damnation" equivalent to praise.

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked

There is no doubt that in Russia a similar kind of tender
treatment is given to the Fenian dynamitards employed by
O'Donovan Rossa. So long as the leading nations in Europe
do not see in these anarchists and desperate miscreants the
irreconcilable enemies of the human race, Paris, completely
Masonic as it is, will afford them a shelter; and when French
tribunals fine or imprison them, it will be as in Italy with a
tenderness still further exhibited in gaols. The salvation of
Europe depends upon a manly abhorrence of secret societies
of every description, and the pulling up root and branch from
human society of the sect of the Freemasons whose "illu-
minated" plottings have caused the mischief so far, and
which if not vigorously repressed by a decided union of
Christian nations will yet occasion far more. Deus fecit na-
tiones sanabiles. The nations can be saved. But if they are
to be saved, it must be by a return to Christianity and to
public Christian usages; by eradicating Atheism and its social-
istic doctrines as crimes against the majesty of God and
the well-being of individual men and nations; by rigorously
prohibiting every form of secret society for any purpose what-
ever; by shutting the mouth of the blasphemer; by controlling
the voice of the scoffer and the impure in the Press and in
every other public expression; by insisting on the vigorous
Christian education of children; and, if they can have the
wisdom of doing it, by opening their ears to the warning voice
of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is not an expression of Irish,
discontent finding a vent in dynamite which England has
most to fear from anarchy. Its value to the Revolution is
the knowledge it gives to those millions whom English educa-
tion-methods are depriving of faith in God, of the use of a
terrible engine against order, property, and the very existence
of the country as such. The dark directory of Socialism is
powerful, wise and determined. It laughs at Ireland and her
wrongs. It hates, and ever will hate, the Irish people for
their fidelity to the Catholic faith. But it seizes upon those
subjects which Irish discontent in America affords, to make
them teach the millions everywhere the power of dynamite,
and the knife, and the revolver, against the comparatively few
who hold property. This is the real secret of dynamite out-
rages in England, in Russia, and all the world over; and I
fear we are but upon the threshold of a social convulsion

140

The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c.

which will try every nation where the wiles of the secret
societies have obtained, through the hate of senseless Christian
sectaries, the power for Atheism to dominate over the rising
generation, and deprive it of Christian faith, and the fear and
the love of God. I hope these my forebodings may not be
realized, but I fear that even before another decade passes,
Socialism will attempt a convulsion of the whole world equal
to that of France in 1789; and that convulsion I fear this
country shall not escape. Our only chance lies in a return to
God, of which, alas, there are as yet but little signs amongst
those who hold power amongst us. I mean of course a return
to the public Christianity of the past.

To this pass Freemasonry has brought the world and
itself. Its hidden Directory no outsider can know. Events
may afterwards reveal who they were. Few can tell who is
or is not within that dark conclave of lost but able men.
There is no staying the onward progress of the tide which
bears on the millions in their meshes to ruin. The only thing
we can hope to do is to save ourselves from being deceived
by their wiles. This, thank God, we may and will do. We
can, at least, in compliance with the advice of our Holy
Father, open the eyes of our own people, of our young men
especially, to the nature and atrocity of the evil, that seeing,
they may avoid the snare laid for them by Atheism. To do
this with greater effect we shall now, for a while, consider the
danger as it appears amongst ourselves.

141

XXI

FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES

WE hear from every side a great deal regarding the difference
said to exist between Freemasonry as it has remained in
the United Kingdom, and as it has developed itself on the
Continent of Europe since its introduction there chiefly,
we must remember, by British Jacobites, in the last century.
It is argued, that the Illuminism of Weishaupt, or that of
Saint Martin, did not cross the Channel to any great extent;
and that on the whole the lodges of England, Ireland, and
Scotland remained loyal to Monarchy and to religion. There
is much truth in all this. The Conservative character of
the mass of English Freemasons, and the fact, that amongst
them were found the real governors and possessors of the
country, made it impossible that such men could conspire
against their own selves. But, as I have already shown,
the fact that British lodges have always had intercourse
with the lodges of the Continent 1 , makes it equally im-
possible that some, at least, of the theories of the latter should
not have got into the lodges on this side of the water. I
believe it is owing mainly to this influence over British Free-
masons, that so many revolutionary movements have found
favour with our legislators, who are, when they are not
Catholics, generally of the craft. It was through it, that the
fatal foreign policy of Lord Palmerston obtained such support,

1 A curious proof of this fact is preserved in the records of Dublin Castle,
where, upon a return of the members and officers of Freemasonry, as
it is with us, having been asked for by the Government, the names of
the delegates from the Irish Lodges to various continental national Grand
Lodges were given. I do not place much value upon the fact as a means
to connect British Freemasonry with its kind on the Continent, because
the real secret was, as a rule, kept from British and Irish Masons. But
the intercourse had an immense effect in causing the vanguard cries
of the Continental lodges to find a fatal support from British Masons
in and out of Parliament. These delegates brought back high sounding
theories about "education" without "denominationalism, ' etc., etc.,
but they were never trusted with the ultimate designs of the Continental
directory to destroy the Throne, the Constitution, and lastly, the very
property of British Masons. These designs are communicated only to
reliable individuals, who know full well the real secret of the sect —
and keep it.

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even against the conviction and instincts of the best and most
farseeing statesmen of the country, as, for instance, the late
Lord Derby. It was through it, certainly, that the cry for
secular education was welcomed amongst us; that divorce and
"liberal" marriage laws came into force, and that attacks
were permitted upon the sanctity of the Sabbath and other
Christian institutions.

The doing away by degrees of the "Lord's Day" is a
favourite aim of Atheism; and it is by resisting this aim — by
resisting all its aims on morality and religion that we can
hope to sustain the Christianity and the religious character of
this country and its people.

But granting that British lodges remain unaffected by
Atheism and Anti-Christianity which, as we have seen,
influence the whole mass of Continental Freemasonry, would
they on that account be innocent? Could a conscientious
man of any Christian denomination join them? The question
is, of course, decided for Catholics. The Church forbids her
children to be members of British or any Freemasonry under
penalty of excommunication. The reasons which have led
the Church to make a law so stringent and so serious must
have been very grave. We have seen some at least of these
reasons; and it is certainly with a full knowledge of facts that
she has decreed the same penalties against such of her children
as join the English lodges as she has against those who join

1 The Alia Vendita and the intellectual party in Masonry have for
a long time endeavoured to revive practices which Christianity did away
with, and which were distinctly pagan. Amongst others they have made
every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and every
respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief in the immortal-
ity of the soul. Death is with man a powerful means to keep alive in
him a wholesome fear of his Creator and respect for religion. Spiritual
writers — following the advice of the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures, "Remem-
ber thy last end and thou shalt never sin," always place before Christians
the thought of death as the most wholesome lesson in the spiritual life.
The demon from the beginning tried to do away with this salutary thought
as the most opposed to his designs. When Eve feared to eat the forbidden
fruit it was because of the terror with which death inspired her. The devil
lied in telling her, "No, ye shall not die the death. She believed the
liar and the murderer. His followers in the secret societies established
by him, and which he keeps in such unity of aim and action, second his
desire to the utmost by doing away with whatever may keep alive in
man the thoughts of his last end and of a future resurrection, and, of course,
of judgment. Weishaupt taught his disciples to look upon suicide as a
praiseworthy means of flying the horrors of death and present inconveni-
ence. Cremation, instantly destroying the terrors of corruption — the

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the lodges of the Continent. Then, though parsons have
become "chaplains" to lodges, Anglicans generally have
shown no sympathy with the Freemasonry of England. I
am not aware that Protestant denominations assume, or
that their members grant them, the power of making laws
which could bind in conscience. If they did possess such
power, many of them, I have no doubt would forbid Free-
masonry, as dangerous and evil in itself. But it needs not
a law from man to guide one in determining what is clearly
prohibited by reason and revelation. Now that which is
called harmless Freemasonry with us, is, besides the evident
danger to which it is exposed, of being made what it has
become in the rest of the world, both sacrilegious and
dangerous. If it be only a society for brotherly intercourse
and mutual help, where can be the necessity of taking for such
purposes, a number of oaths of the most frightful character ?
I shall now quote some of these oaths — the most ordinary
ones taken by every English Freemason who advances to the
first three degrees of the Craft. Oaths far more blasphemous
and terrible are taken in the higher degrees both in England
and on the Continent. I shall also give you the passwords,
grips, and signs for these three main degrees. One can then
judge of the nature of the travesty that is made of the name
of God for purposes utterly puerile, if not meant to cover
such real and deadly secrecy as that of Continental Masonry.
The first of these oaths is administered to the candidate

death's head and cross-bones — the worst features in mortality, as exhibited
in a corpse, is therefore largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly
devised sanitary, aesthetic, and economical grounds. But is it a pagan
practice, opposed to that followed ever since the creation of the world
by all that had the knowledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish,
and Christian dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established
at Rome, Milan and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced
Freemasons, like Garibaldi, have in their wills, directed that their bodies
should be cremated.

When in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advo-
cated without any urgent reason in the press, now almost entirely in
the hands of members of the Sect, and generally Jewish members, Christians
may fear that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule,
the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them
of their purely Christian character are other methods employed by the
Sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these, Christian
people should carefully study to keep the joy of Christmas, the penitential
fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendour of Easter, the feasts of God's
holy Mother and of the saints — to fill themselves, in one word, with the
Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith.

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who wishes to become an apprentice. He is divested of all
money and metal. His right arm, left breast and left knee
are bare. His right heel is slipshod. He is blindfolded, and
a rope called a "cable tow", adapted for hanging, is placed
round his neck. A sword is pointed to his breast, and in
this manner he is placed kneeling before the Master of the
Lodge, in whose presence he takes the following oath, his
hand placed on a Bible: —

"I, N. N., in the presence of the great Architect of
the Universe, and of this warranted, worthy and worshipful
lodge of free and accepted Masons, regularly assembled
and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord,
do hereby and hereon, most solemnly and sincerely swear,
that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any part
or parts, point or points, of the secrets and mysteries of, or
belonging to, free and accepted Masons in masonry, which
have been, shall now, or hereafter may be, communicated to
me, unless it be to a true and lawful brother or brothers, and
not even to him or them, till after due trial, strict examination,
or sure information from a well-known brother, that he or
they are worthy of that confidence, or in the body of a just,
perfect, and regular lodge of accepted Freemasons. I further
solemnly promise, that I will not write those secrets, print,
carve, engrave, or otherwise delineate them, or cause or suffer
them to be done so by others, if in my power to prevent it, on
anything movable or immovable under the canopy of heaven,
whereby or whereon any letter, character or figure, or the
least trace of a letter, character or figure may become legible
or intelligible to myself, or to anyone in the world, so that
our secrets, arts, and hidden mysteries, may improperly
become known through my unworthiness. These several
points I solemnly swear to observe, without evasion, equivoca-
tion, or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty,
on the violation of any of them, than to have my throat cut-
across, my tongue torn out by the root, and my body buried in the
sand of ike sea at low water mark, or a cable's length from the
shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in the
twenty-four hours, or the more efficient punishment of being
branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral
worth, and unfit to be received in this warranted lodge, or
in any other warranted lodge, or society of Masons, who

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prize honour and virtue above all the external advantages of
rank and fortune: so help me, God, and keep me steadfast
in this my great and solemn obligation of an Entered Appren-
tice Freemason."

W.M. — "What you have repeated may be considered a
sacred promise as a pledge of your fidelity, and to render it
a solemn obligation, I will thank you to seal it with your lips
on the volume of the sacred law." (Kisses the Bible.)

When the above oath is duly taken, the "sign" is given.
This for an Apprentice, consists of a gesture made by drawing
the hand smartly across the throat and dropping it to the
side. This gesture has reference to the penalty attached to
breaking the oath. The grip is also a penal sign. It consists
of a distinct pressure of the top of the right hand thumb to
the first joint from the wrist of the right hand forefinger,
grasping the finger with the hand. The pass-word is BOAZ,
and is given letter by letter.

There are a number of quaint ceremonial charges and
lectures which may be seen by consulting any of the Manuals
of Freemasonry, and which are perfectly given in a treatise by
one Carlile, an Atheist, who undertook for the benefit of
Infidelity to divulge the whole of the mere ceremonial secrecy
of English Freemasons, in order to advance the real secret of
it all, namely Pantheism or Atheism, and hatred for every
form of Christianity. The English Freemasons made too much
of the ceremonies and too little of Atheism, and hence the
design of real Infidelity to get the "real secret" into English
lodges by expelling the pretended one.

The oath of the second degree, that of Fellow-Craft, is
as follows : —

"I, N. N., in the presence of the Grand Geometrician of
the Universe, and in this worshipful and warranted Lodge of
Fellow-Craft Masons, duly constituted, regularly assembled,
and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, do
hereby and hereon most solemnly promise and swear that I
will always hail, conceal, and never reveal any or either of
the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the second degree
of Freemasonry, known by the name of the Fellow-Craft, to
him who is but an entered Apprentice, no more than I would
either of them to the uninitiated or the popular world who are
not Masons. I further solemnly pledge myself to act as a

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true and faithful craftsman, obey signs, and maintain the
principles inculcated in the first degree. All these points I
most solemnly swear to obey, without evasion, equivocation,
or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on
the violation of any of them, in addition to my former obliga-
tion, than to have my left breast cut open, my heart torn
therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or the
devouring beasts of the field, as a prey: so help me Almighty
God, and keep me steadfast in this my great and solemn
obligation of a Fellow-Craft Mason."

After taking this oath with all formality, the Fellow-Craft
Mason is entrusted with the sign, grip and pass-word by the
Master, who thus addresses him: —

"You, having taken the solemn obligation of a Fellow-
Craft Freemason, I shall proceed to entrust you with the
secrets of the degree. You will advance towards me as at
your initiation. Now take another pace with your left foot,
bringing the right heel into its hollow, as before. That is the
second regular step in Freemasonry, and it is in this position
that the secrets of the degree are communicated. They consist
as in the former instance, of a sign, token, and word; with this
difference that the sign is of a three-fold nature. The first
part of a three-fold sign is called the sign of fidelity, em-
blematically to shield the repository of your secrets from
the attacks of the cowan. (The sign is made by pressing the
right hand on the left breast, extending the thumb perpendicularly
to form a square). The second part is called the hailing sign,
and is given by throwing the left hand up in this manner
(horizontal from the shoulder to the elbow, and perpendicular from
the elbow to the ends of the fingers, with the thumb and forefinger
forming a square.) The third part is called the penal sign, and
is given by drawing the hand across the breasts and dropping
it to the side. This is in allusion to the penalty of your
obligation, implying that as a man of honour, and a Fellow-
Craft Mason, you would rather have your heart torn from
your breast, than to improperly divulge the secrets of this
degree. The grip, or token, is given by a distinct pressure
of the thumb on the second joint of the hand or that of the
middle finger. This demands a word; a word to be given
and received with the same strict caution as the one in the
former degree, either by letters or syllables. The word is

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JACHIN. As in the course of the evening you will be called on
for this word, the Senior Deacon will now dictate the answers
you will have to give."

The next oath is that of the highest substantial degree in
old Freemasonry, namely, that of Master. Attention is
specially to be paid to the words "or at my own option."

"I, N. N., in the presence of the Most High, and of this
worthy and worshipful lodge, duly constituted, regularly
assembled, and properly dedicated, of my own free will and
accord, do hereby and hereon, most solemnly promise and
swear, that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any
or either of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the
degree of a Master Mason, to anyone in the world, unless it
be to him or them to whom the same may justly and lawfully
belong; and not even to him or them, until after due trials,
strict examination, or full conviction, that he or they are
worthy of that confidence, or in the bosom of a Master Mason's
Lodge. I further most solemnly engage that I will keep the
secrets of the Third Degree from him who is but a Fellow-
Craft Mason, with the same strict caution as I will those of the
Second Degree from him who is but an Entered Apprentice
Freemason; the same or either of them, from anyone in the
known world, unless to true and lawful Brother Masons. I
further solemnly engage myself to advance to the pedestal of
the square and compasses, to answer and obey all lawful signs
and summonses sent to me from a Master Mason's Lodge,
if within the length of my cable-tow, and to plead no excuse
except sickness, or the pressing emergency of my own private
or public avocations. I furthermore solemnly pledge myself to
maintain and support the five points of fellowship, in act as
well as in word; that my hand given to a Mason shall be the
sure pledge of brotherhood; that my foot shall traverse
through danger and difficulties, to unite with his in forming a
column of mutual defence and safety; that the posture of
my daily supplications shall remind me of his wants, and
dispose my heart to succour his distresses and relieve his
necessities, as far as may fairly be done without detriment to
myself or connexions; that my breast shall be the sacred
repository of his secrets, when delivered to me as such;
murder, treason, felony, and all other offences contrary to the
law of God, or the ordinances of the realm, being at all times

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most especially excepted or at my own option: and finally,
that I will support a Master Mason's character in his absence
as well as I would if he were present. I will not revile him
myself, nor knowingly suffer others to do so; but will boldly
repel the slander of his good name, and strictly respect the
chastity of those that are most dear to him, in the persons of
his wife, sister, or his child: and that I will not knowingly
have unlawful carnal connexion with either of them. I further-
more solemnly vow and declare, that I will not defraud a
Brother Master Mason, or see him defrauded of the most
trifling amount, without giving him due and timely notice
thereof; that I will also prefer a Brother Master Mason in all
my dealings, and recommend him to others as much as lies
in my power, so long as he shall continue to act honourably,
honestly and faithfully towards me and others. All these
several points I promise to observe, without equivocation or
mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on
the violation of any of them, than to have my body severed
in two, my bowels torn thereout, and burned to ashes in the
centre, and those ashes scattered before the four cardinal points
of heaven, so that no trace or remembrance of me shall be left
among men, particularly among Master Masons: So help me
God, and keep me steadfast in this grand and solemn obliga-
tion, being that of a Master Mason."

A long ceremony follows, in which the newly-made
Master is made to sham a dead man and to be raised to life
by the Master, grasping, or rather clawing his hand or wrist,
by putting his right foot to his foot, his knee to his knee,
bringing up the right breast to his breast, and with his hand
over the back. This is practised in Masonry as the five points
of Fellowship.

Then the Master gives the signs, grip, and pass-word,
saying:

"Of the signs, the first and second are casual, the third
is penal. The first casual sign is called the sign of horror, and
is given from the Fellow -Craft's hailing sign, by dropping
the left hand and elevating the right, as if to screen the eyes
from a painful sight, at the same time throwing the head over
the right shoulder, as a remove or turning away from that
sight. It alludes to the finding of our murdered Master Hiram
by the twelve Fellow-Crafts. The second casual sign is called

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the sign of sympathy or sorrow, and is given by bending the
head a little forward, and by striking the right hand gently
on the forehead. The third is called the penal sign, because
it alludes to the penalty of your obligation, and is given by
drawing the hand across the centre of the body, dropping it
to the side, and then raising it again to place the point of the
thumb on the navel. It implies that, as a man of honour
and a Master Mason, you would rather be severed in two than
improperly divulge the secrets of this Degree. The grip or
token is the first of the five points of fellowship. The five
points of fellowship are: first, a grip with the right hand
of each other's wrist, with the points of the fingers; second
right foot parallel with right foot on the inside; third, right
knee to right knee; fourth, right breast to right breast;
fifth, hand over shoulder, supporting the back. It is in this
position, and this only, except in open lodge, and then but in
a whisper, that the word is given. It is MAHABONE or
MACBENACH. The former is the ancient, the latter the
modern word."

I have here given an idea of the principal ceremonies used
in making English Freemasons. I could not in the space I have
allotted to myself, enter, as I would wish to do, upon other
features of its ridiculous rites and observances, many of which
in still higher degrees, get a gradually opening, Atheistic and
most anti-Christian interpretation. But it will suffice for my
purpose to bring one fact under your observation. In the
ceremonies accompanying initiations, many charges are made
to the candidates and lectures and catechisings are given. In
these, in the highest degrees, the real secret is gradually
divulged in a manner apparently the most simple. For
instance in the degree of the Knights Adepts of the Eagle or
the Sun, the Master in his charge describing the Bible,
Compass, and Square, says: —

"By the Bible, you are to understand that it is the only
law you ought to follow. It is that which Adam received at
his creation, and which the Almighty engraved in his heart.
This law is called natural law, and shows positively that there
is but one God, and to adore only him without any sub-division
or interpolation. The Compass gives you the faculty of
judging for yourself, that whatever God has created is well,
and he is the sovereign author of everything. Existing in

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himself, nothing is either good or evil, because we understand
by this expression an action done which is excellent in itself,
is relative, and submits to the human understanding, judging
to know the value and price of such action, and that God, with
whom everything is possible, communicates nothing of his will
but such as his great goodness pleases; and everything in the
universe is governed as he has decreed it with justice, being
able to compare it with the attributes of the Divinity. I
equally say, that in himself there is no evil, because he has
made everything with exactness, and that everything exists
according to his will; consequently, as it ought to be. The distance
between good and evil, with the Divinity, cannot be more
justly and clearly compared than by a circle formed with
a compass: from the points being reunited there is formed
an entire circumference; and when any point in particular
equally approaches or equally separates from its point, it is
only a faint resemblance of the distance between good and
evil, which we compare by the points of a compass, forming a
circle, which circle, when completed, is God!"

From this it will be clear, to what the so-called veneration
for the Bible and for religion comes to, at last, in all Free-
masonry. From apparent agreement with Christianity it ends
in Atheism. In the essentially Jewish symbolism of Masonry,
the Trinity is ignored from the commencement, and God
reduced to a Grand Architect. The mention of Christ is care-
fully avoided. By degrees the Bible is not revelation at all —
only the laws written on the heart of every man by the one
God — the one God, yet, however, somewhat respected. But
in a little while, we find the "one God" reduced to very small
dimensions indeed. You may judge for yourself by the
Compass that God exists in himself, "therefore"' — though it is
hard here to see the therefore — "nothing is either good or evil."
Here is a blow at the moral law. Finally, "God," spoken of
with such respect in all the preceding degrees, is reduced to
a nonentity — "which circle when completed is God." This is a
perfect introduction on Weishaupt's lines to Weishaupt's
Pantheism.

But the theories of Masonry, however developed, do less
practical mischief than the conduct it fosters. The English,
happily for themselves, are, in many useful respects, an
eminently inconsistent people. The gentry amongst them can

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join Freemasonry and yet keep, in the most illogical manner
possible, their very diluted form of Christianity. It has been
otherwise with the more reasoning Continental Masons. They
either abandon the Craft or abandon their Christianity. But
the morality inculcated by Freemasonry has done immense
damage in English-speaking countries nevertheless. The very
oath binding a Master Mason to respect the chastity of
certain near relations of another Master Mason, insinuates a
wide field for licence; and Masons, even in England, have
never been the most moral of men. It leads them, we too well
know, to the neglect of home duties, and it leads them to an
unjust persecution of outsiders, for the benefit of Craftsmen —
a matter more than once complained of as injurious in trade,
politics, and social life. I need not call to your mind what
mischief — what foul murder — it has led to in America. I
prefer to let Carlile, the Infidel apologist of dark Masonry,
speak on this point. He says: —

"My exposure of Freemasonry in 1825 led to its exposure
in the United States of America; and a Mason there of the
name of William Morgan, having announced his intention
to assist in the work of exposure, was kidnapped under
pretended forms and warrants of law, by his brother Masons,
removed from the State of New York to the borders of Canada,
near the falls of Niagara, and there most barbarously murdered.
This happened in 1826. The States have been for many years
much excited upon the subject; a regular warfare has arisen
between Masons and anti-Masons; — societies of anti-Masons
have been formed; newspapers and magazines started; and
many pamphlets and volumes, with much correspondence,
published; so that, before the Slavery Question was pressed
among them, all parties had merged into Masons and anti-
Masons. Several persons were punished for the abduction of
Morgan; but the murderers were sheltered by Masonic
Lodges, and rescued from justice. This was quite enough
to show that Masonry, as consisting of a secret association, or
an association with secret oaths and ceremonies, is a political
and social evil."

While writing this, I have been informed that individual
members of Orange Lodges have smiled at the dissolution of
their lodges, with the observation, that precisely the same
association can be carried on under the name of Masonry.

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This is an evil that secret associations admit. No form of
anything of the kind, when secret, can protect itself from
abuses; and this is a strong reason why Masonic associations
should get rid of their unnecessary oaths, revise their constitu-
tions, and throw themselves open to public inspection and
report. There is enough that may be made respectable in
Masonry, in the present state of mind and customs, to admit of
scrutinising publicity.

The question of the death of Morgan, and other unhappy
incidents in the history of Freemasonry in the United States,
are very fully treated by Father Muller, C.SS.R. Yet, strange
to say, notwithstanding anti-Masonic societies being formed
extensively in the Great Republic, and the horror created by
the murder of Morgan, there is no part of the world where
Masonry flourishes more than in America. I believe it will yet
become the greatest enemy of the free institutions of that
country. I am willing to admit, however, that Freemasonry
has, thank God, made little progress amongst Catholics in
Ireland, or Catholics of Irish birth or blood anywhere. This is
true, and the same may be said of millions of Protestants who
have not joined Masonry. But the evil is amongst us for all
that, and it is necessary that we should know what it is and
how it manifests itself.

We know too, that besides the movements which Masonry
has been called upon to serve by means of Masonic organs,
and resolutions inspired by Atheism, and advocated by its
hidden friends scattered through British lodges, there have been
at all times, at least in London, some lodges affiliated to
Continental lodges, and doing the work of Weishaupt. Of this
class were several lodges of foreigners and Jews, which existed
in London contemporaneously with Lord Palmerston, and
which aided him in the government and direction of the
secret societies of the world, and in the Infidel Revolution
which was carried on during his reign with such ability and
success. In the works of Deschamps, a detailed account will
be found of several of these high temples of iniquity and deadly,
anti-Christian intrigue. But besides Masonry of any descrip-
tion — and every description, for reasons already stated, even
the most apparently harmless, is positively bad — bad, because
of its oaths, because of its associations, and because of its un-
christian character, there were other societies formed on the

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lines of Illuminated Masonry under various names in Great
Britain, and especially in Ireland, of which I deem it my duty
while treating of the subject to speak as plainly as I possibly
can.

154

XXII

FENIANISM

FROM the establishment of Illuminated Masonry, its Supreme
Council never lost sight of a discontented population in
any part of the earth. Aspiring to universal rule, it carefully
took cognizance of every national or social movement among
the masses, which gave promise of advancing its aims. It
was thus it succeeded with the operative and peasant popula-
tion of France, so as to accomplish the first and every subse-
quent revolution in that country. The letters of the Alta
Vendita and of Piccolo Tigre especially, have carefully had
in view the corruption of the masses of working men, so
as to de-Christianize them adroitly, and fit and fashion
them into revolutionists. Now amongst all the peoples of
the earth, those who most impeded Atheistic designs, were
the Catholics of Ireland. Forced to leave their country
in millions, they brought to Scotland, to England, to the
United States, to Canada, to the West Indies, to our growing
Colonies — all empires in germ — of Australia, and as soldiers
of England, to India, Africa and China, the strongest existing
faith in that very religion which Atheistic Freemasonry
so much desires to destroy. It would be impossible to imagine,
that the dark Directories of the Illuminati did not take careful
account of this population. And they did. In the years pre-
ceding 1798, they had emissaries, like those sent subsequently
amongst the Catholic Carbonari of Naples, active amongst the
ranks of the United Irishmen. France, then completely under
the control of the Illuminati, sent aid which she sorely wanted
at home, at the instigation of these very emissaries, to found an
Irish Republic, of course on the Atheistic lines, upon which
all the Republics then founded by her arms were established.
That expedition ended in failure; but organisations on the
lines of Freemasonry continued for many years afterwards to
distract Ireland. As in Italy, the Illuminati had taught the
peasantry of Ireland how to conspire in secret, oath bound,
and, of course, often murderous, but always hopeless, league
against their oppressors. These societies never accomplished

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one atom of good for Ireland. They did much mischief.
But what cared the hidden enemies of religion for the real
happiness of the Irish? Their gain consisted in placing
antagonism between the faithful pastors of the people and
the members of those secret societies of Ribbonmen, Molly
Maguires, and other such associations, organized by designing
and, generally, traitorous scoundrels. In 1848, there was
something like a tendency in Ireland to imitate the secret
revolutionary movements established on the Continent by
Mazzini. We had a Young Ireland Organization. That
was not initiated as a secret society. Neither was the Society
of United Irishmen at first. But the open United Irishmen
led to the secret society; and so very easily might the Young
Ireland movement of 1848, if it had not been prematurely
brought to a conclusion. As it was, it led, without its leaders
desiring it — indeed against the will of many of them — to
the deepest, most cunningly devised, widespread, and mis-
chievous, secret organization into which heedless young
Irishmen have been ever yet entrapped. This was the Fenian
Secret Society.

We can speak of the action of the orginators of this
movement as connected with the worst form of Atheistic,
Continental, secret-society organization; for they boasted of
having gone over to France "to study" the plans elaborated
by the most abondoned revolutionists in that country. For my
own part, I believe that these hot-headed young men, as they
were at the time, never took the initiative themselves, but were
entrapped into this course of action by agents of the designing
Directory of the Atheistic movement, at that moment presided
over by Lord Palmerston himself. That the association of the
Fenians should be created and afterwards sacrificed to
England, would be but in keeping with the tradition of the
Alia Vendita, in whose place Lord Palmerston and his council
stood. We read in the life of the celebrated Nubius, the
monarch who preceded Palmerston, that he often betrayed
into the hands of the Pontifical Government some lodges
of the Carbonari under his own rule, for the purpose of
screening himself and of punishing those very lodges. If he
found a lodge indiscreet, or possessing amongst its members
too much religion to be tractable enough to follow the Infidel
movement, he betrayed it. He told the Government how to
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find it out; where it had its arms concealed; who were its
members; and what were their midseeds. They were accord-
ingly taken red-handed, tried, and executed. Nubius got
rid of a difficult body, for whom he felt nothing but contempt;
and his position at Rome was rendered secure to gnaw,
as he himself expressed it, at the foundations of that Pontifical
power, which thought that any connection such a respectable
nobleman as he was, might have with assassins, could be
only in reality for the good of religion and the government,
to which by station, education, and even class-interest he
was allied. Palmerston, too, if he wanted a blind to lead
his colleagues astray, could, in the knowledge to be obtained
of Fenian plots in Ireland and America, have a ready excuse
for his well-known, constant intercourse with the heads of
the Revolution of the world. What scruple would he have,
any more than his predecessor, Nubius, in urging on a few
men whom he despised, to revolution; and then using means
to strangle their efforts and themselves if necessary? It was
good policy in the sight of some at least of his colleagues, to
manifest Ireland as revolutionary, especially when such a man
as Palmerston had all the threads of the conspiracy which
aimed at the revolution in his hand. They knew that he
knew where to send his spies, and thwart at the opportune
moment the whole movement. He could cause insurrections
to be made in the most insane manner, as to time and place,
just as they were made, and cover the conspirators with
easy defeat and ridicule.

However this may be, the Fenian movement after being
nursed in America, appeared in Ireland, as a society founded
upon lines not very unlike those of the Carbonari of Italy.
It was Illuminated Freemasonry with, of course, another
name, in order not to avert the pious Catholic men it meant
to seduce and destroy from its ranks. But being what it was,
it could not long conceal its innate, determined hostility
to the Catholic religion; and it proved itself in Ireland, and
wherever it took a hold of the people in the three kingdoms,
one of the most formidable enemies to the souls of the Irish
people that had ever appeared.

When I say this, do not imagine that I mean for a single
moment to infer, that many of those who joined it, held or
knew its views. If all I have hitherto stated proves anything,

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it is this: the nature of the infernal conspiracy which we are
considering is essentially hypocritical. It comes as Freemasonry
comes, with a lie in its mouth. It comes under false pretences
always. So it came to Italy under the name of Carbonarism.
It came, not only professing the purest Catholic religion, but
absolutely made the saying of prayers, the frequentation of
the sacraments, the open confession of the Faith, and devotion
to the Vicar of Christ, a matter of obligation. I do not believe
that Feniamsm came to Ireland with so many pious professions.
But it came in the guise of patriotism, which in Ireland, for
many centuries, was so bound up with religion that in the
minds of the peasantry the one became inseparably connected
with the other. The friend of the one was looked upon as
the friend of the other; and the enemy of the one was regarded
as the enemy of the other. Hence, in the minds of the Irish,
in my own boyhood, the French who came over under
Hoche, were regarded as Catholic. The Irish held, that
France was then as she was when the "wild geese" went
over to fight for the Bourbons, a Catholic nation. The truth
was, of course, quite the opposite; but so long had the Irish
people been accustomed to regard the French as Catholic,
that they still cherished the delusion, and would hear or
believe nothing to the contrary. It was enough, therefore,
for Fenianism to appear in the guise of a national movement
meant to free the country from Protestant England, that it
should without question be looked upon as — at least in the
first instance — essentially Catholic. Nevertheless, after its
leaders had gone to Paris to study the methods of the French
and Italian Carbonari, and returned to create circles and
centres on the plan of the Vendita of the Italians, they showed
a large amount of the Infidel spirit of the men they found
in France, and determined to spread it in Ireland. They
well knew that the Catholic clergy would be sure to oppose and
denounce them as would every wise and really patriotic man in
the country. The utter impossibility of any military movement
which could be made by any available number of destitute
Irish peasantry succeeding at the time, was in itself reason
enough why man of any humanity, not to speak at all of the
clergy, should endeavour to dissuade the people from the mad
enterprise of the Fenians. Every good and experienced Irish-
man, Smith O'Brien, the editors of the Nation and others,

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did so; yet strange to say, the leaders of the disastrous move-
ment, the Irish, and the American organizers, were permitted
by the English Government, at least so long as Lord Palmerston
lived, to act almost as they pleased in Ireland. The Govern-
ment knew, that while impotent to injure England, these
agitators and conspirators were doing the work which English
anti-Catholic hate desired to do, more effectively than any
delusion, or bribe, or persecution which heresy had been able
to invent. They were undermining the Faith of the people
and destroying secretly but surely that love and respect
for the clergy which had distinguished the country ever
since the days of St. Patrick. A paper edited by one of these
men was circulated for at least two years in the homes of
nearly all the population. It contained, to be sure, much
incitement to revolution; but it contained also that which
in Lord Palmerston's eyes compensated for the kind of
revolution Fenians could make a thousand fold — it contained
the most able, virulent, and subtle attacks upon the clergy.
This paper remained undisturbed until Palmerston passed
away and affairs in America made Fenianism a real danger
for his successors in office. Its issues contained letters written
in its own office, but purporting to come from various country
parishes, calumniating many of the most venerable of the
priests of the people. Men who so loved their flocks as to sacrifice
all for them during the famine years — men who had lived
with them from youth to old age, were now so artfully assailed
as foes of their country's liberation, that the people, maddened
and deluded by such attacks, passed them on the road without
the usual loving salutation Catholics in Ireland give to and
receive from their priests. The Sect backed up the action
of the newspaper. Its leaders got the "word of command"
for that purpose, and had to be obeyed. Matters proceeded
daily from bad to worse, until at last Divine Providence
manifested clearly the deadly designs against religion underlying
the Fenian movement, and the people of Ireland recoiled
from it and were saved.

It was hard to keep even the leaders themselves bad
to the end. At death, few of them like to face the God they
have outraged without reconciliation. But in life these
men, like the informers with whom they are so often in
alliance, do desperate things to deceive first, and then, for a

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passing interest, to ruin their unfortunate dupes afterwards.
For my own part, I am of opinion that the man who deludes a
number of brave young hearts to rush into a murderous
enterprise, hopeless from the outset, is as dangerous as the
man who seduces men to become assassins and then sacrifices
their lives to save his own neck from the halter. At most there
is but the difference of degree in the guilt and malignity of
the leaders who urged on impetuous youth to such risings
as those of the snowstorms in 1867, and of the scoundrel who
planned assassination, entrapped and excited the same kind
of youth to execute it, and then swore their lives away to
save himself from his justly deserved doom. I am led to this
conclusion inevitably from the account given of the Fenian
rising by one of the purest Irish patriots of this century, one
just gone amidst the tears of his fellow-countrymen, with
stainless name after a career of glorious labour, to his eternal
reward. Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan in his interesting "Story
of Ireland," says:

"There was up to the last a fatuous amount of delusion
maintained by the 'Head Centre' on this side of the Atlantic,
James Stephens, a man of marvellous subtlety and wondrous
powers of plausible imposition; crafty, cunning, and quite
unscrupulous as to the employment of means to an end.
However, the army ready to hand in America, if not utilized
at once, would soon be melted away and gone, like the snows
of past winters. So in the middle of 1865 it was resolved to
take the field in the approaching autumn.

"It is hard to contemplate this decision or declaration
without deeming it either insincere or wicked on the part
of the leader or leaders, who at the moment knew the real
condition of affairs in Ireland. That the enrolled members,
howsoever few, would respond when called upon, was certain
at any time; for the Irish are not cowards; the men who
joined this desperate enterprise were sure to prove themselves
courageous, if not either prudent or wise. But the pretence
of the revolutionary chief, that there was a force able to afford
the merest chance of success, was too utterly false not to be
plainly criminal.

"Towards the close of 1865 came almost contempo-
raneously the Government swoop on the Irish Revolutionary
executive, and the deposition — after solemn judicial trial, as

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prescribed by the laws of the society — of O'Mahony, the
American 'Head Centre' for crimes and offences alleged to
be worse than mere imbecility, and the election in his stead
of Colonel William R. Roberts, an Irish American merchant
of high standing and honourable character, whose fortune had
always generously aided Irish patriotic, charitable, or religious
purposes. The deposed official, however, did not submit to
the application of the society rules. He set up a rival associa-
tion, a course in which he was supported by the Irish Head
Centre; and a painful scene of factious and acrimonious
contention betweent the two parties thus antagonised, caused
the English Government to hope — nay, for a moment — fully
to believe — that the disappearance of both must soon follow."

Mr. A. M. Sullivan, after speaking of the history of the
Fenian movement in America, continues: —

"This brief episode at Ridgeway was for the confeder-
ated Irish the one gleam to lighten the page of their history
for 1866. That page was otherwise darkened and blotted by a
record of humiliating and disgraceful exposures in connection
with the Irish Head Centre. In autumn of that year he pro-
ceeded to America, and finding his authority repudiated and
his integrity doubted, he resorted to a course which it would
be difficult to characterize too strongly. By way of attracting
a following to his own standard, and obtaining a flush of
money, he publicly announced that in the winter months close
at hand, and before the new year dawned, he would (sealing
his undertaking with an awful invocation of the Most High)
be in Ireland, leading the long-promised insurrection. Had
this been a mere 'intention' which might be 'disappointed,'
it was still manifestly criminal thus to announce it to the
British Government, unless, indeed, his resources in hand were
so enormous as to render England's preparations a matter of
indifference. But it was not as an 'intention' he announced it
and swore to it. He threatened with the most serious personal
consequences any and every man soever, who might dare to
express a doubt that the event would come off as he swore.
The few months remaining of the year flew by; his intimate
adherents spread the rumour that he had sailed for the scene
of action, and in Ireland the news occasioned almost a panic.
One day, towards the close of December, however, all New
York rang with the exposure that Stephens had never quitted

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for Ireland, but was hiding from his own enraged followers in
Brooklyn. The scenes that ensued were such as may well
be omitted from these pages. In that bitter hour thousands
of honest, impulsive and self-sacrificing Irishmen endured the
anguish of discovering that they had been deceived as never
had men been before; that an idol worshipped with frenzied
devotion was, after all, a thing of clay."

The plottings of the "Head Centre", however, were not
at an end. Mr. A. M. Sullivan continues: —

"In Ireland, where Stephens had been most implicitly
believed in, the news of this collapse — which reached her early
in 1867 — filled the circles with keen humiliation. The more
dispassionate wisely rejoiced that he had not attempted to
keep a promise, the making of which was in itself a crime;
but the desire to wipe out the reproach supposed to be cast
on the whole enrolment by his public defection became so
over-powering, that a rising was arranged to come off simul-
taneously all over Ireland on the 5th March, 1867.

"Of all the insensate attempts at revolution recorded in
history, this one assuredly was pre-eminent. The most
extravagant of the ancient Fenian tales supplies nothing more
absurd. The inmates of a lunatic asylum could scarcely have
produced a more impossible scheme. The one redeeming
feature in the whole proceeding was the conduct of the hapless
men who engaged in it. Firstly, their courage in responding
to such a summons at all, unarmed and unaided as they were.
Secondly, their intense religious feeling. On the days imme-
diately preceding the 5th March, the Catholic churches were
crowded by the youth of the country, making spiritual pre-
parations for what they believed would be a struggle in which
many would fall and few survive. Thirdly, their noble
humanity to the prisoners whom they captured, their scrupu-
lous regard for private property, and their earnest anxiety to
carry on their struggle without infraction in aught of the laws
and rules of honourable warfare."

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XXIII

CONCLUSION

IN conclusion, it is proper that I should say a word to
you upon the attitude of the Church at the present moment,
in the face of the forces of the Organized Atheism of the
world. That organization has now arrived at the perfection
of its dark wisdom, and is making rapid strides to the most
complete and universal exercise of its power. It has succeeded.
Through it the Church is despoiled . . . The religious
orders are virtually suppressed in nearly every country of
Europe. Freemasonry is supreme in the governments of
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Switzerland, and works
its will in nearly all the Republics of Southern America. It
rules Germany, terrifies Russia, distracts Belgium, and
secretly gnaws at the heart of Austria.* Everywhere it ad-
vances with rapid strides both in its secret movements against
Catholicism and the Christian religion generally, and in
open persecution according to the measure of its opportunity
and power. No hope, humanly speaking, appears on the
horizon to warrant us at this moment to look for a change
for the better. But God has promised never to desert His
Church. That promise never can be broken. When the
darkest hour comes it is not for Catholics to look for dissolu-
tion, but for life and hope. The crisis in the conflicts of
Christianity is the hour of victory.

By his immortal Bull, Humanum Genus, Leo XIII has
dealt a death blow to the progress of Freemasonry, which

* According to the Rev. Humphrey J. T. Johnson in Freemasonry, A
Short Historical Sketch (Catholic Truth Society, July, 1950): —

In Italy, "Mussolini showed himself an implacable opponent of the
order" while "in Germany, the Fuhrer, convinced that not only Humani-
tarian but Christian masonry as well was permeated by the Judaic spirit,
suppressed the latter, as well as the former, and would not even allow its
Grand Lodges to continue a nominal existence under such names as the
National Christian Order of Frederick the Great or the Order of Friendship."

Father Johnson also points out that "with the defeat of the Axis
powers the anti-masonic movement collapsed."

In Spain under General Franco and in Portugal under Dr. Salazar,
Freemasonry is forbidden in spite of efforts by American Nato representa-
tives to establish lodges there.

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Conclusion

exerted the utmost efforts of every kind to keep itself hidden,
That it had power to remain hidden is looked upon by some
as one of the most remarkable evidences of its real power. .
Exposure is its death — the death at least of its influence over
its intended dupes amongst Catholics. Therefore comes the
word of command to us all . . : — "Tear off the mask from
Freemasonry and make plain to all what it really is. " Conse-
quently it becomes a plain duty, in season and out of season,
to expose Freemasonry.

164